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The New Nationalism 

By 

Theodore Roosevelt 

With an Introduction by 
Ernest Hamlin Abbott 



t 



New York 

The Outlook Company 

1910 



TV. 



Copyright 1 910, by 

The Outlook Company 

New York 

All rights reserved 



Norwood Press 

y. S. Cusbing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 

Norwood^ Mass. J U.S.A. 



^CU27S549 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Introduction by Ernest Hamlin Abbott .• . vii 



Part I — The New Nationalism 

The New Nationalism, (Osawatomie) 
The Nation and the States. (Colorado Legis 
lature) ...... 

Conservation. (Denver) 

Natural Resources. (St. Paul) 

The Commission Principle. (Sioux Falls) . 

Labor and Capital. (Fargo) . 

World Feats. (Omaha) ... 

Part II — The Old Moralities 

The Crook. (Kansas City) . • 

The Public Press. (Milv^^aukee) 
The Good Citizen. (Pueblo) . 

Part III — The Word and the Deed 

Corruption. (Hamilton Club, Chicago) . . 205 

Law, Order, and Justice. (Columbus) . .218 



5 

' 34 


• 49 


. 77 


. 106 


. 125 


. 144 


. 161 


. 177 


. 197 



vi CONTENTS 

Part IV — The New Nationalism and the Old 
Moralities 

PAGE 

The New Nationalism and the Old Moralities. 

(Syracuse) . . . . . .231 

Criticism of the Courts. (Signed Editorial in The 

Outlook) ...... 245 



Historical Summary. (An Outlook Editorial by 

Lyman Abbott) . , . . ,261 



INTRODUCTION 

Between the twenty-third of August and 
the eleventh of September, this year, Mr. 
Roosevelt made a journey of nearly five 
thousand five hundred miles. In the course 
of that journey he gave addresses in fourteen 
States. The audiences which gathered at 
the meetings which had been arranged in 
advance numbered certainly a third of a 
million. How many hundreds of thousands 
more formed the throngs which greeted him 
in the streets, at the railway stations, and in 
numerous informal but none the less for- 
midable assemblages I do not venture to 
guess. I made no record of even the num- 
ber of meetings; and I could not make a 
reckoning of them without more labor than 
the inaccurate result would warrant. The 
fact is that all of us who made this journey 
were so interested in the substance of what 
was happening that no one kept any statisti- 
cal account of its form. The extent of the 
audiences Mr. Roosevelt really addressed 
was, however, not even remotely suggested 

vii 



viii INTRODUCTION 

by the swaying, crowding thousands in the 
midst of whom for nearly three weeks we 
almost continually lived. The number of 
those whom Mr. Roosevelt's words reached 
was Hmited only by the circulation of the daily 
press. All the important press associations 
and several of the daily newspapers sent spe- 
cial correspondents in a car to be attached to 
every train on which Mr. Roosevelt traveled 
from the beginning of the journey to the 
end; others sent correspondents for part of 
the way; and in every city or locality in 
which he appeared the local newspapers ar- 
ranged for a special report of his speeches 
and the occurrences that accompanied them. 

How did this journey of Mr. Roosevelt's 
come about I What was the significance of 
his addresses? What effect did this trip 
have ? 

If an unprejudiced, thoughtful American 
who had left his country in 1895, and spent 
fifteen years in a remote region away from 
all news of the world, had returned in the 
summer of 19 10, he would, within a few days 
of his arrival, have been impressed with the 
change that had taken place in public opinion, 
and even in the public point of view. When 
he left, public opinion was hard, rather 
sordid, decidedly materialistic, very com- 



INTRODUCTION ix 

placent. Political discussion centered about 
factories, dividends, and dinner pails. Po- 
litical appeals were made chiefly to private 
selfish interests. Political action was judged 
largely as it was supposed to affect wages or 
profits. It is true, there was interest in civil 
service reform, but it was confined to a rather 
limited circle ; it is true, there were bodies of 
men who expressed strong convictions regard- 
ing the public rights in relation to railways 
and big corporations, but they were regarded 
with scorn as Populists. Even on the score 
of material prosperity, the public vision was 
narrowed to the prosperity of manufacturing 
interests. The welfare of the farmer was 
almost overlooked. The nearly sole excep- 
tion was exhibited in the distribution of 
public land to settlers, and this was con- 
ducted with too great indifference as to 
whether such land might fall into the hands 
of men who were not settlers. There was, 
it is true, an organization called the Farmers' 
Alliance, but the country as a whole did not 
regard it very seriously. As for the riches 
of the public domain, no public opinion re- 
garding them was really formed, because no 
political organization made them its concern. 
It is true, a few public men had been devot- 
ing their time and thought to the protection 



X INTRODUCTION 

of this public property in the interest of the 
whole people, as was shown in President 
Harrison's proclamation creating the first Na- 
tional Forest, but the service they performed 
was little appreciated or even known. There 
was a rudimentary interest in the navy, and 
occasional spasmodic excitement over some 
international question, but no widespread 
sense of responsibility for the wise and 
courageous conduct of foreign affairs or for 
the performance of duties by the United 
States as a world power. 

Suppose this American had returned to 
his country this year. He would find a 
change in the attitude of the public on all 
these matters. Although he would find 
people discussing high prices and the cost 
of living, he would miss the once familiar 
arguments about the "full dinner pail," and 
the former public interest in appeals for the 
preservation of dividends. Instead he would 
find the people aroused not only over every 
charge that public office had been used for 
personal reward, but even over questions, 
such as direct nominations, which involve 
the principle of making public officers re- 
sponsible to the popular will; he would 
find not only the matter of railway rates a 
subject of common interest, but the whole 



INTRODUCTION, xi 

problem of the control of public utilities a 
subject of lively interest; he would find the 
welfare of the manufacturers no longer the 
accepted measure of the prosperity of 
the country, but alongside of that he would 
find as an object of public concern the 
welfare of the farmer. Indeed, he would 
note with surprise that the study of the prob- 
lems of rural life is regarded as a legitimate 
duty of a public official. He would be as- 
tonished to learn that the whole country is 
in debate over the proper methods of protect- 
ing and conserving the wealth of the public 
domain, and is ready to hear what might be 
said as to the regulation of even privately 
owned wealth in the interest of the pubHc. 
He would hear with surprise that even the 
tariff question, which was once merely a 
question of compromise between rival in- 
terests, has become a question of subordinat- 
ing all private interests to the interest of the 
pubHc. And with all this change in public 
opinion regarding domestic problems, he 
would find an equally fundamental change 
in public opinion regarding foreign problems 
— a new pride in military efficiency, a new 
sense of international obligations, a new con- 
ception of responsibility on the part of the 
Nation toward other peoples and other races. 



xii INTRODUCTION 

It is time that this new view of national 
interests and national duties had a name, 
and the name which has been given it de- 
scribes it exactly — it is the New NationaKsm. 

It was not by chance that this name, 
which in a few days became current through- 
out the country, should have been chosen 
by Mr. Roosevelt to describe his political 
beliefs, because it is he more than any other 
one man that has given this national con- 
sciousness concrete expression. Utterance 
had been given to this national conscious- 
ness by other leaders of public opinion ; 
and as a name for the body of political 
views which this national consciousness had 
been developing The Outlook had already 
used the phrase, "The New Federalism." 
Every great popular movement, however, is 
a compound of public feeling and personal 
leadership; and in this popular movement it 
was Theodore Roosevelt who preeminently 
supplied the element of personal leadership. 
During the seven years of his presidency, he 
was the figure whom the people recognized as 
the embodiment of their new conceptions, and 
he was equally recognized as such by those 
who, for various reasons, sought to check 
and thwart this movement. He himself has 
explained his relation to the new public senti- 



INTRODUCTION xiil 

ment. In his speech at Cheyenne, Wyoming 
(which is not included in this volume), he 
pointed out that the one predominant char- 
acteristic of the frontiersman was his free- 
dom from provincialism, — his feeling that 
every part of the United States is of con- 
cern to him, his desire to uphold the inter- 
ests of all other Americans, his sense of 
partnership with all his fellows in the work 
of progress, his feehng of comradeship, which, 
when applied nationally, becomes a determi- 
nation to work for the common good. And 
in a later speech — that at Sioux Falls, South 
Dakota, which is to be found printed in this 
volume — he explained that when, as Presi- 
dent, he acted in accord with this popular 
feeling, it was not because he used any 
means to divine the popular feehng, but 
because, as a result of his experience as a 
ranchman on the frontier, he had come to 
think that way himself. 

His presidency having come to an end, 
Mr. Roosevelt spent over a year abroad — 
in Africa and Europe. During his absence 
the popular movement which he had fostered 
continued to develop. At the same time the 
opposition to that movement also grew in 
intensity. He had, however, become so 
much identified with the movement that he 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

could no more have withdrawn from it than 
Lincoln could have withdrawn from the 
cause of the Union. His duty to continue 
to exercise his gifts and his prestige on behalf 
of the nation was obvious. This duty he 
himself recognized. On the day of his return, 
indeed within a few minutes after he had once 
more set foot on American soil, he addressed 
to a small portion of the great throng gathered 
to greet him the following words : — 

I thank you, Mayor Gaynor. Through you, I thank 
your committee, and through them I wish to thank the 
American people for their greeting. I need hardly 
say I am most deeply moved by the reception given me. 
No man could receive such a greeting without being 
made to feel both very proud and very humble. 

I have been away a year and a quarter from America, 
and I have seen strange and interesting things alike in the 
heart of the frowning wilderness and in the capitals of the 
mightiest and most highly polished of civilized nations. 

I have thoroughly enjoyed myself; and now I am 
more glad than I can say to get home, to be back in my 
own country, back among people I love. And I am 
ready and eager to do my part, so far as I am able, in 
helping solve problems which must be solved if we, of 
this the greatest democratic republic upon which the sun 
has ever shone, are to see its destinies rise to the high level 
of our hopes and its opportunities. 

This is the duty of every citizen, but it is peculiarly my 
duty; for any man who has ever been honored by being 
made President of the United States is thereby forever 
after rendered the debtor of the American people, and is 



INTRODUCTION xv 

bound throughout his life to remember this as his prime 
obligation, and, in private life as much as in public life, 
so to carry himself that the American people may never 
have cause to feel regret that once they placed him at their 
head. 

Observance of the duty he thus acknowl- 
edged made it absolutely impossible for him 
to shut himself off from public occasions. 
Invitations to make addresses had reached 
him as soon as he left the wilderness of 
Africa, and before he had been in America 
two months some two thousand such invita- 
tions had been sent to him. Some principle 
of selection had to be adopted in determining 
which he should accept. One of the first 
invitations to reach him was for the Frontier 
Celebration at Cheyenne. Mr. Roosevelt's 
admiration for the spirit and record of the 
pioneers led him to accept this; and around 
it others were naturally grouped, in such an 
order that a practicable journey could be 
arranged. His itinerary thus brought him 
before a grange meeting at Summit Park 
near Utica, New York; an assemblage of 
two or three hundred prominent men at 
breakfast in Buffalo; a gathering in a public 
square in Council Bluffs, Iowa; a great 
crowd at the celebration in Cheyenne; a 
huge gathering in Denver, and, in the State 



xvi INTRODUCTION 

Capitol in the same city, the Legislature 
of Colorado and their guests; an assemblage 
\. at the laying of a cornerstone in Pueblo; 
a great crowd at the dedication of the John 
Brown battlefield at Osawatomie, Kansas; 
a great audience at Kansas City, Missouri; 
another such audience at Omaha; a throng 
in a baseball park at Sioux City, Iowa; an- 
other such throng in and about a large tent 
'^ in Sioux Falls, South Dakota; two great 
. audiences in Fargo, North Dakota — one of 
which assembled at the laying of the corner- 
stone of a library building at Fargo College, 
the other of which overran a park at the 
Labor Day celebration; the delegates to the 
Conservation Congress and others who 
V crowded the big auditorium at St. Paul, and 
then the vast assemblage of ninety or a hun- 
, dred thousand at the State Fair in the same 
city; two big audiences at Milwaukee; an 
outdoor gathering at a picnic at Freeport, 
Illinois, in behalf of a home for disabled 
railway men; the members of the Hamilton 
Club at a banquet in Chicago; an audience 
in the big music hall at Cincinnati, in con- 
nection with an exposition ; a mass of people 
in a public park in Columbus, Ohio; and, 
finally, an outdoor crowd at night in Pitts- 
burg, followed by a meeting of people 



INTRODUCTION xvii 

engaged in civic and philanthropic effort, 
both meetings arranged under the exceed- 
ingly competent management of the Pitts- 
burg Civic Commission. In addition to 
these audiences, he addressed, in compliance 
with the numerous telegrams and letters that 
came to him en route, crowds that gathered 
at nearly every station where the train stopped 
between an early hour in the morning and 
a late hour at night. By these speeches, 
ranging from those which occupied but a 
minute or two to those which occupied an 
hour and a half, he reasserted his belief in 
the poHcies which had become famihar to 
the American people as "the Roosevelt 
poHcies," and the fundamental moral prin- 
ciples on which he beHeved they rested. 

In this volume only a portion of even the 
more important speeches which Mr. Roose- 
velt made in the course of this journey are 
included. But, it is believed, those that do 
appear fairly represent the political belief 
to which he gave utterance. They are not 
arranged chronologically. In the first part 
is a group of speeches which in the main are 
devoted to the poHcies of the New National- 
ism ; in the second part is a group devoted to 
the fundamental moral principles on which 
these policies are based; in the third are 



xviii INTRODUCTION 

two speeches which supply interesting ex- 
amples of the dramatic application of those 
principles to particular exigencies; in the 
fourth are a speech and a signed editorial from 
The Outlook, both of which were prepared 
by Mr. Roosevelt after the end of the 
journey, but both of which expound with 
more detail certain statements which appear 
in condensed form in a speech in the West. 

What the effect of these speeches will be 
on the history of the country any one may 
surmise, no one can know; but some of the 
immediate effects upon public opinion, and 
in particular upon the audiences who heard 
them, were, to one who made this journey, 
very obvious. 

All of the speeches here printed were re- 
ceived with remarkable demonstrations of 
approval. They fulfilled the first requisite 
of public address: they conveyed ideas 
from the speaker to his hearers with no evi- 
dence of substantial loss in the process of 
transmission. In some cases the throng was 
so vast that only a part could form literally 
the audience; but those who heard made it 
perfectly plain that they understood. In 
that respect many a Western crowd proved 
itself apparently more intelligent than some 
metropolitan editors. The great mass of the 



INTRODUCTION xix 

American people, it is evident from these 
speeches, do not mistake Mr. Roosevelt's 
meaning. 

Those speeches which discuss the policies 
of the New Nationalism had a double effect 
of unification. They unified present political 
issues, and they unified present political 
forces. In one state, for example, the 
paramount issue had been direct nomina- 
tions; in another the tariff; in another 
political corruption; in another the control 
of public service corporations. Each of 
these states saw its own issue, but little of 
the others. Mr. Roosevelt's speeches made 
the thoughtful people, and especially the 
pubHc-spirited leaders, see that these were 
all a part of the same general issue. As a 
consequence these speeches united the forces, 
for they enabled the leaders who were fight- 
ing on behalf of the pubHc in one state to 
see that they were really comrades of those 
who were fighting on behalf of the public in 

another. 

Those speeches which discuss fundamental 
ethical principles (those which I have placed 
in the second group) had that moral effect 
which always is evident when a mass of 
people feel that they have a leader whom 
they know they can follow. It is the effect 



XX INTRODUCTION 

that some generals, some football captains, 
some orchestral conductors have upon their 
men. 

Those speeches which dealt with special 
exigencies (and I include in this the speech to 
the Colorado Legislature as well as the two 
speeches in Part Three), had the effect of 
suddenly clearing the air. The political strug- 
gle in Colorado has been of the most serious 
character. Corruption and slander have been 
common; and when Mr. Roosevelt, invited 
to the very arena of the struggle, struck at 
both, he wrung applause out of both factions. 
In Illinois there was, at the time of his visit 
to Chicago, a legislative scandal of great 
extent, reaching up to high public officials. 
When Mr. Roosevelt spoke there, he not only 
refused to sit at dinner with the Senator 
whose election created the scandal, but made 
plain the ugliness of the evil about which 
men had been timidly silent. In Columbus 
Mr. Roosevelt spoke at the critical time of a 
great strike, in which a dispute between a 
street railway company and its men had 
resulted in the intimidation of the public. 
Again Mr. Roosevelt made his words weapons 
with which to fight the evils that had cowed 
public opinion. In each of these three cases, 
the speech was an act which seems simple, 



INTRODUCTION xxi 

but which no one else had had both the 
courage and strength to perform. 

There are some Americans who are skepti- 
cal concerning democracy, some who regard 
vested wrongs as entitled to the same security 
that should be assured to vested rights, and 
some who covet unearned privilege. Such 
as these can, out of their own brains, con- 
struct explanations of this Western Journey 
that will suit themselves. For such this 
introduction is entirely superfluous. There 
are other Americans, however, who, though 
not distrustful of democracy, though not 
confused in their thinking about vested rights, 
and though not selfishly prejudiced, have 
so often seen the office-holder use his office 
as personal property that they cannot think 
any public man capable of an impulse really 
to serve. Such as these, I hope, can see in 
Mr. Roosevelt's journey an eminent example 
of the sort of disinterested public service 
which is rendered, often more obscurely 
but as conscientiously, by many other pubHc 
men. And in proportion as the great popu- 
lar movement on behalf of the public 
interest advances, such disinterested public 
service will become more and more common. 

E. H. A. 

October 12, 1910. 



PART I 

THE NEW NATIONALISM 



THE NEW NATIONALISM 

SPEECH AT OSAWATOMIE 
31 August, 1910 

We come here to-day to commemorate one 
of the epoch-making events of the long 
struggle for the rights of man — the long 
struggle for the uplift of humanity. Our 
country — this great repubhc — means noth- 
ing unless it means the triumph of a real 
democracy, the triumph of popular govern- 
ment, and, in the long run, of an economic 
system under v^hich each man shall be 
guaranteed the opportunity to show the best 
that there is in him. That is why the history 
of America is now the central feature of the 
history of the world; for the world has set 
its face hopefully toward our democracy; 
and, O my fellow citizens, each one of you 
carries on your shoulders not only the burden 
of doing well for the sake of your own country, 
but the burden of doing well and of seeing 
that this nation does well for the sake of 
mankind. 

There have been two great crises in our 
country's history: first, when it was formed, 

3 



4 THE NEW NATIONALISM 

and then, again, when it was perpetuated; 
and, in the second of these great crises — in 
the time of stress and strain which culminated 
in the Civil War, on the outcome of which 
depended the justification of what had been 
done earlier, you men of the Grand Army, 
you men who fought through the Civil War, 
not only did you justify your generation, 
not only did you render life worth living for 
our generation, but you justified the wisdom 
of Washington and Washington's colleagues. 
If this republic had been founded by them 
only to be split asunder into fragments when 
the strain came, then the judgment of the 
world would have been that Washington's 
work was not worth doing. It was you who 
crowned Washington's work, as you carried 
to achievement the high purpose of Abraham 
Lincoln. 

Now, with this second period of our his- 
tory the name of John Brown will be forever 
associated; and Kansas was the theater 
upon which the first act of the second of our 
great national life dramas was played. It 
was the result of the struggle in Kansas 
which determined that our country should 
be in deed as well as in name devoted to both 
union and freedom; that the great experi- 
ment of democratic government on a national 



THE NEW NATIONALISM s 

scale should succeed and not fall. In name 
we had the Declaration of Independence in 
1776; but we gave the lie by our acts to the 
words of the Declaration of Independence 
until 1865; and words count for nothing 
except in so far as they represent acts. This 
is true everywhere; but, O my friends, it 
should be truest of all in political Hfe. A 
broken promise is bad enough in private 
life. It is worse in the field of politics. 
No man is worth his salt in public life who 
makes on the stump a pledge which he does 
not keep after election; and, if he makes such 
a pledge and does not keep it, hunt him out 
of public life. I care for the great deeds of 
the past chiefly as spurs to drive us onward 
in the present. I speak of the men of the 
past partly that they may be honored by 
our praise of them, but more that they may 
serve as examples for the future. 

It was a heroic struggle; and, as is inevi- 
table with all such struggles, it had also a 
dark and terrible side. Very much was done 
of good, and much also of evil; and, as was 
inevitable in such a period of revolution, 
often the same man did both good and evil. 
For our great good fortune as a nation, we, 
the people of the United States as a whole, 
can now afford to forget the evil, or, at least, 



6 ,THE NEW NATIONALISM 

to remember it without bitterness, and to 
fix our eyes with pride only on the good that 
was accomplished. Even in ordinary times 
there are very few of us who do not see the 
problems of life as through a glass, darkly; 
and when the glass is clouded by the murk 
of furious popular passion, the vision of the 
best and the bravest is dimmed. Looking 
back, we are all of us now able to do justice 
to the valor and the disinterestedness and the 
love of the right, as to each it was given to 
see the right, shown both by the men of the 
North and the men of the South in that con- 
test which was finally decided by the attitude 
of the West. We can admire the heroic 
valor, the sincerity, the self-devotion shown 
ahke by the men who wore the blue and the 
men who wore the gray; and our sadness 
that such men should have had to fight one 
another is tempered by the glad knowledge 
that ever hereafter their descendants shall 
be found fighting side by side, struggling in 
peace as well as in war for the uplift of their 
common country, all alike resolute to raise 
to the highest pitch of honor and usefulness 
the nation to which they all belong. As for 
the veterans of the Grand Army of the Re- 
public, they deserve honor and recognition 
such as is paid to no other citizens of the 



THE NEW NATIONALISM 7 

republic; for to them the republic owes 
its all; for to them it owes its very existence. 
It is because of what you and your comrades 
did in the dark years that we of to-day walk, 
each of us, head erect, and proud that we 
belong, not to one of a dozen little squabbling 
contemptible commonwealths, but to the 
mightiest nation upon which the sun shines. 

I do not speak of this struggle of the 
past merely from the historic standpoint. 
Our interest is primarily in the application 
to-day of the lessons taught by the contest 
of half a century ago. It is of little use for 
us to pay Hp loyalty to the mighty men of 
the past unless we sincerely endeavor to 
apply to the problems of the present pre- 
cisely the qualities which in other crises 
enabled the men of that day to meet those 
crises. It is half melancholy and half amus- 
ing to see the way in which well-meaning 
people gather to do honor to the men who, 
in company with John Brown, and under 
the lead of Abraham Lincoln, faced and 
solved the great problems of the nineteenth 
century, while, at the same time, these same 
good people nervously shrink from, or fran- 
tically denounce, those who are trying to 
meet the problems of the twentieth century 
in the spirit which was accountable for the 



8 THE NEW NATIONALISM 

successful solution of the problems of Lin- 
coln's time. 

Of that generation of men to whom we 
owe so much, the man to whom we owe 
most is, of course, Lincoln. Part of our 
debt to him is because he forecast our 
present struggle and saw the way out. He 
said : — 

I hold that while man exists it is his duty to improve 
not only his own condition, but to assist in ameliorating 
mankind. 



And 



agam : — 



Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital 
is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if 
labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capi- 
tal, and deserves much the higher consideration. 

If that remark was original with me, I 
should be even more strongly denounced as 
a communist agitator than I shall be anyhow. 
It is Lincoln's. I am only quoting it; and 
that is one side; that is the side the capitalist 
should hear. Now, let the workingman hear 
his side. 

Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of 
protection as any other rights. . . . Nor should this 
lead to a war upon the owners of property. Property 
is the fruit of labor; . . . property is desirable ; is a 
positive good in the world. 



THE NEW NATIONALISM 9 

And then comes a thoroughly Lincolnlike 
sentence : — 

Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of 
another, but let him work diligently and build one for 
himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be 
safe from violence when built. 

It seems to me that, in these words, Lin- 
coln took substantially the attitude that we 
ought to take; he showed the proper sense 
of proportion in his relative estimates of 
capital and labor, of human rights and prop- 
erty rights. Above all, in this speech, as in 
many others, he taught a lesson in wise kind- 
liness and charity; an indispensable lesson 
to us of to-day. But this wise kindliness and 
charity never weakened his arm or numbed 
his heart. We cannot afford weakly to blind 
ourselves to the actual conflict which faces us 
to-day. The issue is joined, and we must 
fight or fail. 

In every wise struggle for human better- 
ment one of the main objects, and often the 
only object, has been to achieve in large 
measure equality of opportunity. In the 
struggle for this great end, nations rise from 
barbarism to civilization, and through it 
people press forward from one stage of en- 
lightenment to the next. One of the chief 



10 THE NEW NATIONALISM 

factors in progress is the destruction of special 
privilege. The essence of any struggle for 
healthy liberty has always been, and must 
always be, to take from some one man or 
class of men the right to enjoy power, or 
wealth, or position, or immunity, which has 
not been earned by service to his or their 
fellows. That is what you fought for in the 
Civil War, and that is what we strive for now. 
At many stages in the advance of humanity, 
this conflict between the men who possess 

\^ more than they have earned and the men 
who have earned more than they possess is 
the central condition of progress. In our 
day it appears as the struggle of free men to 
gain and hold the right of self-government as 

V against the special interests, who twist the 
V methods of free government into machinery 
for defeating the popular will. At every 
stage, and under all circumstances, the 
essence of the struggle is to equalize oppor- 
tunity, destroy privilege, and give to the life 
and citizenship of every individual the highest 
possible value both to himself and to the 
commonwealth. That is nothing new. All 
I ask in civil life is what you fought for in the 
Civil War. I ask that civil life be carried on 
according to the spirit in which the army 
was carried on. You never get perfect jus- 



THE NEW NATIONALISM ii 

tice, but the effort in handling the army was 
to bring to the front the men who could do 
the job. Nobody grudged promotion to 
Grant, or Sherman, or Thomas, or Sheridan, 
because they earned it. The only complaint 
was when a man got promotion which he did 
not earn. 

Practical equality of opportunity for all 
citizens, when we achieve it, will have two 
great results. First, every man will have a 
fair chance to make of himself all that in 
him Hes; to reach the highest point to which 
his capacities, unassisted by special privilege 
of his own and unhampered by the special 
privilege of others, can carry him, and to get 
for himself and his family substantially what 
he has earned. Second, equality of oppor- 
tunity means that the commonwealth will . 
get from every citizen the highest service of 
which he is capable. No man who carries 
the burden of the special privileges of an- 
other can give to the commonwealth that 
service to which it is fairly entitled. 

I stand for the square deal. But when I 
say that I am for the square deal, I mean not 
merely that I stand for fair play under the 
present rules of the game, but that I stand . 
for having those rules changed so as to 
work for a more substantial equality of 



12 THE NEW NATIONALISM 

opportunity and of reward for equally good 
service. One word of warning, which, I 
think, is hardly necessary in Kansas. When 
I say I want a square deal for the poor man, 
I do not mean that I want a square deal for 
the man who remains poor because he has 
not got the energy to work for himself If a 
man who has had a chance will not make 
good, then he has got to quit. And you men 
of the Grand Army, you want justice for the 
brave man who fought, and punishment for 
the coward who shirked his work. Is not 
that so? 

Now, this means that our government, 
national and state, must be freed from the 
sinister influence or control of special interests. 
Exactly as the special interests of cotton and 
slavery threatened our political integrity 
before the Civil War, so now the great 
special business interests too often control 
and corrupt the men and methods of govern- 
ment for their own profit. We must drive 
the special interests out of politics. That is 
one of our tasks to-day. Every special in- 
terest is entitled to justice — full, fair, and 
complete, — and, now, mind you, if there 
were any attempt by mob violence to plunder 
and work harm to the special interest, what- 
ever it may be, that I most dislike, and the 



THE NEW NATIONALISM 13 

wealthy man, whomsoever he may be, for 
whom I have the greatest contempt, I would 
fight for him, and you would if you were 
worth your salt. He should have justice. 
For every special interest is entitled to justice, 
but not one is entitled to a vote in Congress, 
to a voice on the bench, or to representation in 
any public office. The Constitution guaran- 
tees protection to property, and we must 
make that promise good. But it does not 
give the right of suffrage to any corporation. 

The true friend of property, the true con- 
servative, is he who insists that property 
shall be the servant and not the master of 
the commonwealth; who insists that the 
creature of man's making shall be the serv- 
ant and not the master of the man who 
made it. The citizens of the United States 
must effectively control the mighty com- 
mercial forces which they have themselves 
called into being. 

There can be no effective control of cor- 
porations while their political activity re- 
mains. To put an end to it will be neither 
a short nor an easy task, but it can be done. 

We must have complete and effective 
publicity of corporate affairs, so that the 
people may know beyond peradventure 
whether the corporations obey the law and 



14 THE NEW NATIONALISM 

whether their management entitles them to 
the confidence of the public. It is necessary 
that laws should be passed to prohibit the 
use of corporate funds directly or indirectly 
for political purposes; it is still more neces- 
sary that such laws should be thoroughly 
enforced. Corporate expenditures for po- 
litical purposes, and especially such expen- 
ditures by public service corporations, have 
supplied one of the principal sources of cor- 
ruption in our political affairs. 

It has become entirely clear that we must 
have government supervision of the capital- 
ization, not only of public service corpora- 
tions, including, particularly, railways, but 
of all corporations doing an interstate busi- 
ness. I do not wish to see the nation forced 
into the ownership of the railways if it can 
possibly be avoided, and the only alternative 
is thoroughgoing and effective regulation, 
which shall be based on a full knowledge of 
all the facts, including a physical valuation 
of property. This physical valuation is not 
needed, or, at least, is very rarely needed, 
for fixing rates; but it is needed as the basis 
of honest capitalization. 

We have come to recognize that franchises 
should never be granted except for a limited 
time, and never without proper provision 



THE NEW NATIONALISM 15 

for compensation to the public. It is my 
personal belief that the same kind and degree 
of control and supervision which should be 
exercised over public service corporations 
should be extended also to combinations 
which control necessaries of life, such as 
meat, oil, and coal, or which deal in them 
on an important scale. I have no doubt 
that the ordinary man who has control of them 
is much like ourselves. I have no doubt he 
would like to do well, but I want to have 
enough supervision to help him realize that 
desire to do well. 

I beheve that the officers, and, especially, 
the directors, of corporations should be held 
personally responsible when any corporation 
breaks the law. 

Combinations in industry are the result 
of an imperative economic law which cannot 
be repealed by political legislation. The 
effort at prohibiting all combination has 
substantially failed. The way out lies, not 
in attempting to prevent such combinations, 
but in completely controlHng them in the 
interest of the public welfare. For that 
purpose the Federal Bureau of Corporations 
is an agency of first importance. Its powers, 
and, therefore, its efficiency, as well as that 
of the Interstate Commerce Commission, 



i6 THE NEW NATIONALISM 

should be largely increased. We have a 
right to expect from the Bureau of Corpora- 
tions and from the Interstate Commerce 
Commission a very high grade of public 
service. We should be as sure of the proper 
conduct of the interstate railways and the 
proper management of interstate business as 
we are now sure of the conduct and manage- 
ment of the national banks, and we should 
have as effective supervision in one case as 
in the other. The Hepburn Act, and the 
amendment to the Act in the shape in which 
it finally passed Congress at the last session, 
represent a long step in advance, and we 
must go yet further. 

There is a widespread belief among our 
people that, under the methods of making 
tariffs which have hitherto obtained, the 
special interests are too influential. Prob- 
ably this is true of both the big special inter- 
\ \ ests and the little special interests. These 
methods have put a premium on selfishness, 
and, naturally, the selfish big interests have 
gotten more than their smaller, though equally 
selfish, brothers. The duty of Congress is 
to provide a method by which the interest 
of the whole people shall be all that receives 
consideration. To this end there must be 
an expert tariff commission, wholly removed 



THE NEW NATIONALISM 17 - 

from the possibility of political pressure or 
of improper business influence. Such a 
commission can find the real difference 
between cost of production, which is mainly 
the difference of labor cost here and abroad. 
As fast as its recommendations are made, I 
believe in revising one schedule at a time. 
A general revision of the tariff almost inevi- 
tably leads to log-rolling and the subordina- 
tion of the general public interest to local 
and special interests. 

The absence of effective state, and, espe- 
cially, national, restraint upon unfair money 
getting has tended to create a small class of . ^^ 
enormously wealthy and economically pow- 
erful men, whose chief object is to hold and 
increase their power. The prime need is 
to change the conditions which enable these 
men to accumulate power which it is not for 
the general welfare that they should hold or 
exercise. We grudge no man a fortune which 
represents his own power and sagacity, when "' 
exercised with entire regard to the welfare 
of his fellows. Again, comrades over there, 
take the lesson from your own experience. 
Not only did you not grudge, but you gloried 
in the promotion of the great generals who 
gained their promotion by leading the army 
to victory. So it is with us. We grudge no 



IS THE NEW NATIONALISM 

man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably 
obtained and well used. It is not even enough 
that it should have been gained without 
doing damage to the community. We should 
permit it to be gained only so long as the 
gaining represents benefit to the community. 
This, I know, implies a policy of a far more 
active governmental interference with social 
and economic conditions in this country 
than we have yet had, but I think we have 
got to face the fact that such an increase in 
governmental control is now necessary. 

No man should receive a dollar unless that 
dollar has been fairly earned. Every dollar 
received should represent a dollar's worth of 
service rendered — not gambling in stocks, 
^' but service rendered. The really big for- 
tune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact 
of its size acquires qualities which differen- 
tiate it in kind as well as in degree from what 
is possessed by men of relatively small means. 
Therefore, I believe in a graduated income 
tax on big fortunes, and in another tax which 
is far more easily collected and far more 
effective — a graduated inheritance tax on 
big fortunes, properly safeguarded against 
evasion and increasing rapidly in amount 
with the size of the estate. 
The people of the United States suffer 



THE NEW NATIONALISM 19 

from periodical financial panics to a degree 
substantially unknown among the other 
nations which approach us in financial 
strength. There is no reason why we should 
suffer what they escape. It is of profound 
importance that our financial system should 
be promptly investigated, and so thoroughly 
and effectively revised as to make it certain 
that hereafter our currency will no longer 
fail at critical times to meet our needs. 

It is hardly necessary for me to repeat 
that I believe in an efficient army and a navy 
large enough to secure for us abroad that 
respect which is the surest guarantee of peace. 
A word of special warning to my fellow citi- 
zens who are as progressive as I hope I am. 
I want them to keep up their interest in our 
internal affairs; and I want them also con- 
tinually to remember Uncle Sam's interests 
abroad. Justice and fair dealing among 
nations rest upon principles identical with 
those which control justice and fair dealing 
among the individuals of which nations are 
composed, with the vital exception that each 
nation must do its own part in international 
police work. If you get into trouble here, 
you can call for the poHce; but if Uncle Sam 
gets into trouble, he has got to be his own 
policeman, and I want to see him strong 



20 THE NEW NATIONALISM 

enough to encourage the peaceful aspirations 
of other peoples in connection with us. I 
believe in national friendships and heartiest 
good will to all nations; but national friend- 
ships, like those between men, must be 
founded on respect as well as on liking, on 
forbearance as well as upon trust. I should 
be heartily ashamed of any American who 
did not try to make the American govern- 
ment act as justly toward the other nations 
in international relations as he himself would 
act toward any individual in private rela- 
tions. I should be heartily ashamed to see 
us wrong a weaker power, and I should hang 
my head forever if we tamely suffered wrong 
from a stronger power. 

Of conservation I shall speak more at 
length elsewhere. Conservation means de- 
velopment as much as it does protection. 
I recognize the right and duty of this genera- 
tion to develop and use the natural resources 
of our land ; but I do not recognize the right 
to waste them, or to rob, by wasteful use, 
the generations that come after us. I ask 
nothing of the nation except that it so behave 
as each farmer here behaves with reference 
to his own children. That farmer is a poor 
creature who skins the land and leaves it 
worthless to his children. The farmer is a 



THE NEW NATIONALISM 21 

good farmer who, having enabled the land 
to support himself and to provide for the 
education of his children, leaves it to them a 
little better than he found it himself. I be- 
heve the same thing of a nation. 

Moreover, I beHeve that the natural re- 
sources must be used for the benefit of all 
our people, and not monopoHzed for the bene- 
fit of the few, and here again is another case 
in which I am accused of taking a revolu- 
tionary attitude. People forget now that one 
hundred years ago there were public men 
of good character who advocated the nation 
selHng its public lands in great quantities, 
so that the nation could get the most money 
out of it, and giving it to the men who could 
cultivate it for their own uses. We took the 
proper democratic ground that the land 
should be granted in small sections to the 
men who were actually to till it and Hve on it. 
Now, with the water power, with the forests, 
with the mines, we are brought face to face 
with the fact that there are many people 
who will go with us in conserving the re- 
sources only if they are to be allowed to 
exploit them for their benefit. That is one of 
the fundamental reasons why the special 
interests should be driven out of poHtics. 
Of all the questions which can come before 



22 THE NEW NATIONALISM 

this nation, short of the actual preservation 
of its existence in a great war, there is none 
which compares in importance with the great 
central task of leaving this land even a 
better land for our descendants than it is for 
us, and training them into a better race to 
inhabit the land and pass it on. Conserva- 
tion is a great moral issue, for it involves the 
patriotic duty of insuring the safety and con- 
tinuance of the nation. Let me add that 
the health and vitality of our people are at 
least as well worth conserving as their for- 
ests, waters, lands, and minerals, and in this 
great work the national government must bear 
a most important part. 

I have spoken elsewhere^ also of the great 
task which lies before the farmers of the 
country to get for themselves and their wives 
and children not only the benefits of better 
farming, but also those of better business 
methods and better conditions of life on the 
farm. The burden of this great task will 
fall, as it should, mainly upon the great 
organizations of the farmers themselves. 
I am glad it will, for I believe they are all 
well able to handle it. In particular, there 
are strong reasons why the Departments 

* In a speech at Utica, New York, not included in 
this volume. — E. H. A. 



THE NEW NATIONALISM aj 

of Agriculture of the various states, the 
United States Department of Agriculture, 
and the agricultural colleges and experiment 
stations should extend their work to cover 
all phases of farm life, instead of limiting 
themselves, as they have far too often limited 
themselves in the past, solely to the question 
of the production of crops. And now a 
special word to the farmer. I want to see 
him make the farm as fine a farm as it can 
be made; and let him remember to see that 
the improvement goes on indoors as well as 
out; let him remember that the farmer's 
wife should have her share of thought and 
attention just as much as the farmer himself. 
Nothing is more true than that excess of 
every kind is followed by reaction; a fact 
which should be pondered by reformer and 
reactionary alike. We are face to face with 
new conceptions of the relations of property 
to human welfare, chiefly because certain 
advocates of the rights of property as against 
the rights of men have been pushing their 
claims too far. The man who wrongly holds 
that every human right is secondary to his 
profit must now give way to the advocate 
of human welfare, who rightly maintains that 
every man holds his property subject to the 
general right of the community to regulate 



\ 



w 



24 THE NEW NATIONALISM 

its use to whatever degree the public welfare 
may require it. 

But I think we may go still further. The 
right to regulate the use of wealth in the 
public interest is universally admitted. Let 
us admit also the right to regulate the terms 
and conditions of labor, which is the chief 
element of wealth, directly in the interest 
of the common good. The fundamental 
thing to do for every man is to give him a 
chance to reach a place in which he will 
make the greatest possible contribution to 
the public welfare. Understand what I say 
there. Give him a chance, not push him up 
if he will not be pushed. Help any man 
who stumbles; if he lies down, it is a poor 
job to try to carry him; but if he is a worthy 
man, try your best to see that he gets a chance 
to show the worth that is in him. No man 
can be a good citizen unless he has a wage 
more than sufficient to cover the bare cost 
of living, and hours of labor short enough 
so that after his day's work is done he will 
have time and energy to bear his share in 
the management of the community, to help 
in carrying the general load. We keep count- 
less men from being good citizens by the con- 
ditions of life with which we surround them. 
We need comprehensive workmen's com- 



THE NEW NATIONALISM 25 

pensation acts, both state and national laws 
to regulate child labor and work for women, 
and, especially, we need in our common 
schools not merely education in book learn- 
ing, but also practical training for daily 
life and work. We need to enforce better 
sanitary conditions for our workers and to 
extend the use of safety appHances for 
our workers in industry and commerce, 
both within and between the states. Also, 
friends, in the interest of the workingman 
himself we need to set our faces like flint 
against mob violence just as against corporate 
greed; against violence and injustice and 
lawlessness by wage workers just as much 
as against lawless cunning and greed and 
selfish arrogance of employers. If I could 
ask but one thing of my fellow countrymen, 
my request would be that, whenever they go 
in for reform, they remember the two sides, 
and that they always exact justice from one 
side as much as from the other. I have 
small use for the public servant who can 
always see and denounce the corruption of 
the capitalist, but who cannot persuade 
himself, especially before election, to say a 
word about lawless mob violence. And I 
have equally small use for the man, be he 
a judge on the bench, or editor of a great 



26 THE NEW NATIONALISM 

paper, or wealthy and influential private 
citizen, who can see clearly enough and de- 
nounce the lawlessness of mob violence, but 
whose eyes are closed so that he is blind 
when the question is one of corruption in 
business on a gigantic scale. Also remem- 
ber what I said about excess in reformer 
and reactionary alike. If the reactionary 
man, who thinks of nothing but the rights 
of property, could have his way, he would 
V bring about a revolution; and one of my 
chief fears in connection with progress comes 
because I do not want to see our people, for 
lack of proper leadership, compelled to fol- 
low men whose intentions are excellent, but 
whose eyes are a little too wild to make it 
really safe to trust them. Here in Kansas 
there is one paper which habitually denounces 
me as the tool of Wall Street, and at the 
same time frantically repudiates the state- 
ment that I am a SociaHst on the ground 
that that is an unwarranted slander of the 
Socialists. ^| 

National efficiency has many factors. It 
is a necessary result of the principle of con- 
servation widely applied. In the end it will 
determine our failure or success as a na- 
tion. National efficiency has to do, not only 
with natural resources and with men, but it 



THE NEW NATIONALISM 27 

is equally concerned with institutions. The 
state must be made efficient for the work 
which concerns only the people of the state; 
and the nation for that which concerns all 
the people. There must remain no neutral 
ground to serve as a refuge for lawbreakers, 
and especially for lawbreakers of great 
wealth, who can hire the vulpine legal cun- 
ning which will teach them how to avoid both 
jurisdictions. It is a misfortune when the 
national legislature fails to do its duty in 
providing a national remedy, so that the only 
national activity is the purely negative activity 
of the judiciary in forbidding the state to 
exercise power in the premises. 

I do not ask for overcentralization;. but 
I do ask that we work in a spirit of broad 
and far-reaching nationalism when we work 
for what concerns our people as a whole. 
We are all Americans. Our common inter- 
ests are as broad as the continent. I speak 
to you here in Kansas exactly as I would 
speak in New York or Georgia, for the most 
vital problems are those which affect us all 
alike. The national government belongs to 
the whole American people, and where the 
whole American people are interested, that 
interest can be guarded effectively only by 
the national government. The betterment 



vv 



28 THE NEW NATIONALISM 

which we seek must be accomplished, I be- 
lieve, mainly through the national govern- 
ment. 

The American people are right in demand- 
ing that New Nationalism, without which 
we cannot hope to deal with new problems. 
The New Nationalism puts the national 
need before sectional or personal advantage. 
It is impatient of the utter confusion that 
results from local legislatures attempting 
to treat national issues as local issues. It is 
still more impatient of the impotence which 
springs from overdivision of governmental 
powers, the impotence which makes it possible 
for local selfishness or for legal cunning, 
hired by wealthy special interests, to bring 
national activities to a deadlock. This New 
Nationalism regards the executive power as 
the steward of the public welfare. It de- 
mands of the judiciary that it shall be in- 
terested primarily in human welfare rather 
than in property, just as it demands that the 
representative body shall represent all the 
people rather than any one class or section 
of the people. 

I believe in shaping the ends of govern- 
ment to protect property as well as human 
welfare. Normally, and in the long run, the 
ends are the same; but whenever the alter- 



THE NEW NATIONALISM 29 

native must be faced, I am for men and not 
for property, as you were in the Civil War. I 
am far from underestimating the importance 
of dividends; but I rank dividends below 
human character. Again, I do not have any 
sympathy with the reformer who says he 
does not care for dividends. Of course, 
economic welfare is necessary, for a man 
must pull his own weight and be able to 
support his family. I know well that the 
reformers must not bring upon the people 
economic ruin, or the reforms themselves 
will go down in the ruin. But we must be 
ready to face temporary disaster, whether or 
not brought on by those who will war against 
us to the knife. Those who oppose all re- 
form will do well to remember that ruin in 
its worst form is inevitable if our national 
life brings us nothing better than swollen 
fortunes for the few and the triumph in both 
politics and business of a sordid and selfish 
materialism. 

If our political institutions were perfect, 
they would absolutely prevent the political 
domination of money in any part of our 
affairs. We need to make our political rep- 
resentatives more quickly and sensitively 
responsive to the people whose servants they 
are. More direct action by the people in 



30 THE NEW NATIONALISM 

their own affairs under proper safeguards is 
vitally necessary. The direct primary is a 
step in this direction, if it is associated with 
a corrupt practices act effective to prevent 
the advantage of the man willing recklessly 
and unscrupulously to spend money over his 
more honest competitor. It is particularly im- 
portant that all moneys received or expended 
for campaign purposes should be pubHcly 
accounted for, not only after election, but 
before election as well. Political action 
must be made simpler, easier, and freer from 
confusion for every citizen. I believe that the 
prompt removal of unfaithful or incompetent 
public servants should be made easy and sure 
in whatever way experience shall show to be 
most expedient in any given class of cases. 

One of the fundamental necessities in a 
representative government such as ours is to 
^ make certain that the men to whom the 

XiV people delegate their power shall serve the 
people by whom they are elected, and not 
the special interests. I believe that every 
national officer, elected or appointed, should 
be forbidden to perform any service or re- 
ceive any compensation, directly or indirectly, 
from interstate corporations; and a similar 
provision could not fail to be useful within 
the states. 



THE NEW NATIONALISM 31 

The object of government is the welfare 
of the people. The material progress and 
prosperity of a nation are desirable chiefly 
so far as they lead to the moral and material 
welfare of all good citizens. Just in propor- 
tion as the average man and woman are 
honest, capable of sound judgment and high 
ideals, active in public affairs, — but, first of 
all, sound in their home life, and the father 
and mother of healthy children whom they 
bring up well, — just so far, and no farther, 
we may count our civilization a success. We 
must have — I believe we have already — a 
genuine and permanent moral awakening, 
without which no wisdom of legislation or 
administration really means anything; and, 
on the other hand, we must try to secure the 
social and economic legislation without which 
any improvement due to purely moral agita- 
tion is necessarily evanescent. Let me again 
illustrate by a reference to the Grand Army. 
You could not have won simply as a dis- 
orderly and disorganized mob. You needed 
generals; you needed careful administration 
of the most advanced type; and a good 
commissary — the cracker line. You well 
remember that success was necessary in many 
different lines in order to bring about general 
success. You had to have the administration 



32 THE NEW NATIONALISM 

at Washington good, just as you had to have 
the administration in the field; and you had 
to have the work of the generals good. You 
could not have triumphed without that ad- 
ministration and leadership; but it would all 
have been worthless if the average soldier had 
not had the right stuff in him. He had to 
have the right stuff in him, or you could not 
get it out of him. In the last analysis, there- 
fore, vitally necessary though it was to have 
the right kind of organization and the right 
kind of generalship, it was even more vitally 
necessary that the average soldier should 
have the fighting edge, the right character. 
So it is in our civil life. No matter how 
honest and decent we are in our private 
lives, if we do not have the right kind of 
law and the right kind of administration of 
the law, we cannot go forward as a nation. 
That is imperative; but it must be an addi- 
tion to, and not a substitution for, the quali- 
ties that make us good citizens. In the last 
analysis, the most important elements in any 
man's career must be the sum of those 
qualities which, in the aggregate, we speak 
of as character. If he has not got it, then 
no law that the wit of man can devise, no 
administration of the law by the boldest and 
strongest executive, will avail to help him. 



THE NEW NATIONALISM 33 

We must have the right kind of character — 
character that makes a man, first of all, a 
good man in the home, a good father, a good 
husband — that makes a man a good neigh- 
bor. You must have that, and, then, in ad- 
dition, you must have the kind of law and 
the kind of administration of the law which 
will give to those qualities in the private 
citizen the best possible chance for develop- 
ment. The prime problem of our nation is 
to get the right type of good citizenship, and, 
to get it, we must have progress, and our pub- 
lic men must be genuinely progressive. 



THE NATION AND THE STATES 

SPEECH BEFORE THE COLORADO LEGIS- 
LATURE 

29 August, 1910 

I WAS very much pleased by your invita- 
tion to me to address you to-day. It is 
nearly twenty-nine years ago that I began 
my service in politics as a member of the 
Lower House of the New York State Legis- 
lature. I always felt that I graduated from 
Harvard, went into the New York Legisla- 
ture, and began my education. I realize 
the great importance of the work of a state 
legislator, the difficulties under which he 
does that work, the temptations to which he 
is exposed; and I sympathize with the men 
who, having worked well, have the bitter 
knowledge that their good work has not 
been appreciated. If Colorado is at all like 
New York, there are occasional men who do 
not work well at all, and the extent of whose 
shortcomings should be practically appre- 
ciated more than it is. Since then, I have 
served in many different positions, including 
Governor and the position of Deputy Sheriff 
in the cow country under an employee of 

34 



THE NATION AND THE STATES 35 

mine who was Sheriff; and, looking back, I 
can say with sincerity that I do not know any 
place where it is more necessary to have 
good work done, or where, together with bad 
work, there is more disinterested honest 
work done, than in the state legislatures of 
our country. Three or four gentlemen to- 
day have expressed the hope that I would 
speak to you about some of your own troubles. 
To relieve the obvious nervousness of the 
Assembly, I shall say that I am not going 
to do it, one reason being that, though each 
of those who addressed me felt very strongly 
that I should speak to you, each radically 
differed from all the others as to what I 
should say. There are troubles and failings 
connected with all legislative bodies about 
which I could speak; and of some of these 
I should speak to you now if I were not to 
make a speech this evening where I shall 
take them up at length. 

I want now, as a man recently connected 
with the national government, to call atten- 
tion to the great need that there shall be 
more coherent work in the future than in the 
past between the state and the national 
governments. The legislative and execu- 
tive officers of our country, national and 
state, but, above all, the judicial officers. 



36 THE NATION AND THE STATES 

are to blame for the fact that there has grown 
up a neutral land — a borderland — in the 
spheres of action of the national and the 
state governments — a borderland over which 
each government tends to claim that it 
has the power, and as to which the action 
of the courts unfortunately has usually been 
such as to deny to both the power. Now, 
we have what I think is, on the whole, and 
with all its shortcomings and imperfections, 
the most satisfactory form of government 
that has yet been devised by men. I am 
accustomed to speak as a historian. There 
are plenty of defects in our system of govern- 
ment that I could point out; but, compared 
with the systems of government of other 
countries, good though some of them are, 
ours, I think, is the most satisfactory. One 
of the most valuable features is the largely 
realized effort to have the affairs that con- 
cern all of us throughout the land treated 
by the central or national legislature, while 
the affairs which concern us only in each 
of our several localities are treated by our 
state legislatures. That is the wisest pos- 
sible method so long as no areas are left 
uncovered by them; so long as there are no 
spaces that are not filled in by government 
control. 



THE NATION AND THE STATES 37 

Unfortunately, the course of governmental 
construction by the courts, as also the 
course of governmental action by legislator 
and executive, has not kept pace in this 
nation during the last forty years with the 
extraordinarily complex industrial develop- 
ment. We have changed from what was pre- 
dominantly an agricultural people, where all 
were on planes of livelihood not far apart, 
and where business was simple, into a com- 
plex industrial community with a great devel- 
opment of corporations, and with conditions 
such that by steam and electricity the busi- 
ness of the nation has become completely 
nationaUzed. In consequence, the needs 
have wholly changed. There was no need 
in the old days, of the law taking special 
care of the rights of the farm laborer; for 
he could take care of himself, and, if he was 
not treated right, he could move on and take 
up a farm himself. If he did not succeed on 
a farm, he could go to a city, or he could 
go West. But at present the relations of 
employer and employee are wholly different 
from what they were before. We now have 
to protect the employee to a degree unnec- 
essary half a century ago. We now have to 
recognize the desirability of the right of col- 
lective bargaining on the part of the employ- 



38 THE NATION AND THE STATES 

ees face to face with the great corporation, as 
was not necessary when the employer was one 
man or a partnership of two or three men 
employing half a dozen or half a score of 
men. So a hundred years ago, when the sail- 
boat and the canal boat and the wagon and 
the pack train represented the only means of 
communication, the states could each take 
care of the business within the state. Now, 
as we have had to recognize in laws for the 
control of railroad business and of other inter- 
state business, the national government is 
obliged to act. 

It happens, probably inevitably, that the 
courts occupy a position of importance in our 
government such as they occupy in.no other 
government, because, instead of dealing only 
with the rights of one man face to face with 
his fellow men, as is the case with other gov- 
ernments, they here pass upon the fundamental 
governmental rights of the whole people as 
exercised through their legislative and execu- 
tive officers. Unfortunately, the courts, in- 
stead of leading in the recognition of the new 
conditions, have lagged behind ; and, as each 
case has presented itself, have tended by a 
series of negative decisions to create a sphere 
in which neither nation nor state has effective 
control; and where the great business inter- 



THE NATION AND THE STATES 39 

ests that can call to their aid the ability of 
the greatest corporation lawyers escape all 
control whatsoever. Let me illustrate what 
I mean by a reference to two concrete cases. 
Remember that I beHeve in state's rights 
wherever state's rights mean the people's 
rights. On the other hand, I beHeve in 
national rights wherever national rights mean 
the people's rights; and, above all, I beHeve 
that in every part of our complicated social 
fabric there must be either national or state 
control, and that it is ruinous to permit gov- 
ernmental action, and especially judicial ac- 
tion, which prevents the exercise of such con- 
trol. I am for a fact, not a formula; I am 
for the rights of the people first and foremost, 
and for the " rights " of the nation or state, 
in any given series of cases, just in propor- 
tion as insistence upon them helps in securing 
popular rights. 

The first case to which I shall refer is the 
Knight Sugar Trust case. In that case the 
Supreme Court of the United States handed 
down a decision which rendered it exceedingly 
difficult for the people to devise any method 
of controlHng and regulating the business use 
of great capital in interstate commerce. It 
was a decision nominally against national 
rights, but really against popular rights — 



40 THE NATION AND THE STATES 

against the democratic principle of govern- 
ment by the people. 

The second case is the so-called New York 
Bakeshop case. In New York City, as in 
most large cities, the baking business is 
likely to be carried on under unhygienic 
conditions — conditions which tell against 
the welfare of the general public. The 
New York Legislature passed, and the New 
York Governor signed, a bill remedying 
these unhealthy conditions. New York State 
was the only body which could deal with 
them; the nation had no power whatever 
in the matter. Acting on evidence which to 
them seemed ample and sufficient, acting in 
the interest of the public and in accordance 
with the demand of the public, the only 
governmental authority having affirmative 
power in the matter, the Governor and the 
Legislature of the State of New York, took 
the action which they deemed necessary, 
after what inquiry and study was needed 
to satisfy them as to the conditions and as to 
the remedy. The Governor and the Legis- 
lature alone had the affirmative power to 
remedy the abuse. But the Supreme Court 
of the United States possessed — and, un- 
fortunately, exercised — the negative power 
of not permitting the abuse to be remedied. 



THE NATION AND THE STATES 41 

By a five to four vote they declared the action 
of the State of New York unconstitutional, 
because, forsooth, men must not be deprived 
of their "liberty" to work under unhealthy 
conditions. 

All who are acquainted with the effort to 
remedy industrial abuses know the type of 
mind (it may be perfectly honest but is abso- 
lutely fossilized) which declines to ' allow 
us to work for the betterment of conditions 
among the wage earners on the ground that 
we must not interfere with the "liberty" of 
a girl to work under conditions which jeop- 
ardize life and limb, or the "liberty" of a 
man to work under conditions which ruin 
his health after a limited number of years. 

Such was the decision. The court was, 
of course, absolutely powerless to make the 
remotest attempt to provide a remedy for 
the wrong which undoubtedly existed, and 
its refusal to permit action by the state 
did not confer any power upon the nation 
to act. The decision was nominally against 
state's rights, really against popular rights. 

Such decisions, arbitrarily and irresponsi- 
bly limiting the power of the people, are of 
course fundamentally hostile to every species 
of real popular government. Representa- 
tives of the People of Colorado, here assem- 



42 THE NATION AND THE STATES 

bled in your legislative capacity, we as a 
nation should see to it that the people, through 
their several legislatures, national and state, 
have complete power of control in all matters 
that affect the public interest. There should 
be no means by which any man or set of men 
could escape the exercise of that control. 

We should get the power; that is the first 
requisite. Now, then, the second is to see 
that the power be exercised with justice and 
moderation. The worst enemy of wise con- 
servatism that I know is the type of conser- 
vative who tries to prevent wrongs from being 
remedied because the wrongs have existed 
for a long time; and, on the other hand, the 
worst enemy of true progress is the dema- 
gogue, or the visionary, who, in the name 
of progress, leads the people to make blunders 
such that in the resulting reaction they tend 
to distrust all progress. Distrust the dema- 
gogue and the mere visionary just as you 
distrust that hidebound conservative who 
too often, though an honest man himself, 
proves to be one of the most efficient friends 
of corruption. Remember that if you fall 
into the Scylla of demagogism, on the one 
hand, it will not help you that you have 
avoided the Charybdis of corruption and 
conservatism on the other. If you are in 



THE NATION AND THE STATES 43 

one gulf, it is perfectly true that you are not 
in the other. But you are in one. 

Be progressive. A great democracy has 
got to be progressive, or it will soon cease to 
be either great or a democracy; but rem.em- 
ber, no matter what your enthusiasm, that 
if you make rapid progress in the wrong direc- 
tion you will merely have to undo it before 
you get to the right path again. As I have 
said before, each one of our localities has its 
own special problems to work out; and as 
to those special problems, an outsider is not 
competent to speak; but there are certain 
things to which all of us in every state should 
pay heed, we in New York and you in Col- 
orado, the people of every state and the 
people of the national capital. 

If I were asked to name the three influ- 
ences which I thought were most dangerous 
to the perpetuity of American institutions, 
I should name corruption in business and 
politics aHke, lawless violence, and mendac- 
ity, especially when used in connection with 
slander. 

Corruption : You cannot afford to tolerate 
in your ranks the corrupt man, and the first 
duty of a constituency should be to see that 
its representative is not merely honest in the 
sense that he cannot be legally shown to be 



44 THE NATION AND THE STATES 

dishonest, but that he is a dead straight man 
whom no one can think of as crooked. I 
do not want it to be praise to a man that he 
is honest; I want it to be an impossible sup- 
position for a representative to be thought 
of as anything else; but you cannot get that 
honesty unless you insist upon it among 
yourselves in your own relations of life. If 
you train up your children to hear a shady 
scoundrel spoken of with a certain half ad- 
miration as, **Well, he is smart''; if you let 
your children hear a man's crookedness 
excused on the ground that he is clever, that 
he is a cheat, but that he cheats mighty well, 
you have yourselves to blame if your legis- 
latures betray you. More than that, distrust 
anything in the nature of class privilege; 
distrust the labor leader who will inveigh 
against corruption only when it is shown 
by the rich man; and distrust equally the 
rich man who will subscribe heavily to put 
down lawbreaking among small politicians, 
and who is shocked at corruption among 
labor leaders, but who leaves you instantly 
as soon as you try to bring the big corpora- 
tion to book. If you elect a man because 
you think he will be honest towards your 
class, — capitalists, farmers, laborers, — and 
if you are indifferent as to whether he is 



THE NATION AND THE STATES 45 

honest towards other people, you can make 
up your minds absolutely that he will betray 
you if he gets the chance. You cannot afford 
not to have a man honest all the way through, 
because if he is not, you do not know quite 
where the breaking down will come. 

Lawless violence: Here again remember 
that in time of mob violence all reform has 
to wait until order is restored. As a people 
it is gravely to our discredit that there should 
be so much unpunished murder, so many 
deeds of lawlessness and mob violence. Let 
the friend of the people who is severe upon 
the corruption of wealth make up his mind 
that he is a mighty poor public servant if he 
does not set his face against disorder when 
it takes the form of violence, just as much 
as against corruption. The man who can 
only see evil in the corruption of the rich, 
and the man who can only see evil in the 
lawless violence of the poor, stand on the same 
plane of bad citizenship. Keep order. War 
both against corruption and against lawless 
violence. That is what you and public 
officials need to keep in mind. 

Now as to critics. I don't like the thief, 
but I like the liar just as little. The very 
fact that we need to have corruption in every 
phase unflinchingly exposed, the very fact 



46 THE NATION AND THE STATES 

that we need to have every man shown up 
who has acted improperly, because it is not 
merely a disgrace but a vital injury to us to 
permit corruption in public life or corruption 
in business life, that very fact emphasizes 
the wrong done by the man who without 
warrant accuses another of corruption. He 
has committed one of the cardinal sins against 
the body politic. It is not merely an injury 
to the man accused, it is an injury of the 
deepest type to the body politic, because 
after awhile, when accusations are contin- 
ually and sweepingly made against all men, 
good and bad, the public as a whole grow 
to believe in each accusation a little and in 
no accusation entirely, so that they grow to 
believe that there is a little something bad 
about the decent man and that there is not 
much bad about the crook. No greater harm 
can be done to the body politic than by those 
men who, through reckless and indiscriminate 
accusation of good men and bad men, honest 
men and dishonest men alike, finally so hope- 
lessly puzzle the public that they do not be- 
lieve that any man in public life is entirely 
straight ; while, on the other hand, they lose all 
indignation against the man who really is 
crooked. Greatly though I scorn and despise 
the corrupt public servant, greatly though I 



THE NATION AND THE STATES 47 

wish to see him punished with the utmost 
seventy of the law, my scorn and contempt for 
him are no greater than for the man who by 
mendacity and through slander attacks the 
character of honest men just as he attacks 
the character of dishonest men, and thereby 
does his best, be that best great or small, 
to tear down the pillar of the temple and bury 
us all under the ruins. I speak of the man 
who writes in the daily press. {Loud ap- 
plause.) I trust that it is not because this 
is a legislative assembly that you have 
applauded this more than what I said about 
public officials ! .Now, I will go with you to 
the last point in condemning the man who 
in the public press writes an untruth, if you 
will go with me to the last point in condemn- 
ing equally actively the legislator who acts 
corruptly. Now, I will resume my sentence 
where I left off. I speak of the man who 
writes in the public press. I speak of the 
man who writes in the magazines. I speak 
of the politician on the stump. {A pause — 
silence.) Applaud ! (Loud applause.) I 
knew I would get it when I pointed out the 
need of it ! Judge men not by the class to 
which they belong, but by their conduct as 
individuals. The only man who I think is a 
little more useful than the wise and honest 



48 THE NATION AND THE STATES 

public official is the wise and honest man in 
the press, and the only man who I think is a 
little more noxious than the dishonest public 
official is the untruthful man in the public 
press. I will make myself perfectly clear. I 
ask you to stand by the official who is honest; 
I ask you to stand by the newspaper man and 
magazine writer who truthfully exposes cor- 
ruption; and I ask you to stand against the 
official scoundrel who is dishonest and his 
equally base brother in the press who falsely 
accuses an honest man of dishonesty. 

I thank you for the patience with which 
you have listened to me, and I am very glad 
I finally got all the applause I wanted at the 
points I wanted it. 



CONSERVATION 

SPEECH AT DENVER BEFORE THE COLORADO 
LIVE STOCK ASSOCIATION 

29 August, 1 9 10 

I WAS profoundly touched by the invita- 
tion to address you to-day. I have been pro- 
foundly touched by the reception in the city 
this morning; and, most of all, by the greet- 
ing I now receive and by the way that greet- 
ing has been phrased by the Governor and 
the Mayor. I value it all the more inasmuch 
as they and I do not belong to the same party; 
because there are many things that stand 
infinitely above party; because when we 
come to the great essentials — to the things 
that make in their aggregate the character 
of a good citizen — we come to the things 
which dwarf parties and classes into absolute 
insignificance. 

And now, my friends, I came here expect- 
ing to make an address on Conservation to 
an audience of perhaps fifteen hundred 
people specifically interested in it; and I 
only hope that you will have patience with 
E 49 



so CONSERVATION 

me because I cannot travel as far afield as 
I would like in addressing an audience like 
this. 

And, first, let me make clear what I do 
not mean by Conservation. Conservation, 
as I use the term, does not mean nonuse or 
nondevelopment. It does not mean tying 
up the natural resources of the states. It 
means the utilization of these resources under 
such regulation and control as will prevent 
waste, extravagance, and monopoly; but at 
the same time, not merely promoting, but 
encouraging such use and development as 
will serve the interests of the people generally. 

And if any man can point out where by the 
action of those who think as I do the develop- 
ment of the natural resources is being held 
up, I will join with him against my friends 
and followers and do my best to see that 
the development is not interfered with; but 
I want him to be sure of the facts before he 
comes. I wish you would read the report 
of Mr. Graves, of your Chamber of Com- 
merce here, when charges aflFecting the 
Forestry Department and its alleged with- 
holding of agricultural lands were made — 
and they were very grave and very large 
charges until it was required that they should 
be made definite, and then they dwarfed 



CX)NSERVATION 51 

until they became well-nigh invisible. I will 
go with you to the limit in trying to alter any 
legislation or administration that improperly 
prevents the development of the natural re- 
sources; but when you come and tell me 
about it, tell me about the act itself — give 
me specific facts and not general accusations. 
It is time we should wake up the country 
as to the need of using foresight and com- 
mon sense as regards our natural resources. 
We of this generation hold the land in part 
for the use of the next generation, and not 
exclusively for our own selfish enjoyment. 
Mr. Mayor, in building up Denver, you 
had been thinking of it with an eye, not 
merely to your own administration, not 
merely to the welfare of the citizens now 
living, but with an eye to the welfare of the 
Denver that is to be. Governor, you are 
serving, not only for the Colorado now, but 
for the Colorado of your children's children 
— of those who are not voters to-day. So it 
must be with us as a whole in dealing with 
the natural resources. We have passed the 
time when we will tolerate the man whose 
only idea is to skin the country and move 
on. As it is with him, so it is with the 
nation. That farmer is a good citizen who 
leaves his farm improved, and not impaired, 



52 CONSERVATION 

for his children; and he is a bad citizen if 
he has used up his farm and passes it on to 
his children who inherit it. So, the nation 
behaves well if it treats the natural resources 
as assets which it must turn over to the next 
generation increased, and not impaired, in 
value; and behaves badly if it leaves the land 
poorer to those who come after it. That is 
all I mean by the phrase, Conservation of 
natural resources. Use them; but use them 
so that as far as possible our children will 
be richer, and not poorer, because we have 
lived. 

In the second place, these natural re- 
sources must be developed promptly, com- 
pletely, and in orderly fashion. I am no 
friend of holding off. Development is an 
indispensable part of the Conservation plan. 
The forests, the mines, the water powers, 
and the land itself must be put in use. Those 
err who think that the opposite course is 
advocated by any whom I regard as genuine 
friends of Conservation. 

In the third place, and so far as possible, 
these resources must be kept for the whole 
people and not handed over for exploitation 
to any single individual or group of indi- 
viduals. We do not intend to discourage 
individual enterprise by diminishing un- 



CONSERVATION 53 

wisely the reward for that enterprise. On 
the contrary, we believe that the men of 
exceptional abilities should have exceptional 
rewards up to, but not beyond, the point 
where the reward becomes disproportionate 
to the services, up to the point where the 
abilities are used to the detriment of the 
people as a whole. I honor the captain of 
industry, and I am glad to see him rewarded 
so long as he acts honestly and so long as his 
reward is not wholly disproportionate to the 
work he has done. If he does not act hon- 
estly, then I hope the laws will be so framed 
and so administered as to go at him just as 
if he were the smallest sneak thief in the 
slums of a great city. And if his reward is 
utterly disproportionate to his great services, 
then I will join with those who try to shape 
conditions so that the reward and the serv- 
ices shall stand in better relation. What I 
say of the individual applies to the corpora- 
tion. I am for the corporation which does 
right. I recognize the absolute need of the 
corporation in our business life to-day. I 
believe the corporation is entitled to protec- 
tion in its rights; but it is not entitled to 
vote, and it is not entitled to proprietorship 
in any pubHc man. We are for the Hberty 
of the individual up to, and not beyond, the 



54 CONSERVATION 

point where it becomes inconsistent with the 
welfare of the community. Thus, our con- 
sistent aim is to favor the actual settler — 
the man who takes as much of the public 
domain as he himself can cultivate, and 
there makes a permanent home for his 
children who come after him; but we are 
against the man, no matter what his ability, 
who tries to monopolize, at the expense of 
such settler, large masses of public land. 

State and Federal Control 

Now, to preserve the general welfare, to 
see to it that the rights of the public are 
protected, and the liberty of the individual 
secured and encouraged consistent with this 
welfare, and curbed when it becomes incon- 
sistent therewith, it is necessary to invoke the 
aid of the government. There are points in 
which this governmental aid can best be 
rendered by the states; that is, where the 
exercise of state's rights helps to secure popu- 
lar rights ; and where this is true — where 
state's rights mean popular rights — I believe 
in state's rights. But there are large classes 
of cases where only the authority of the 
national government will secure the rights 
of the people ; and where this is the case, I 



CONSERVATION 55 

am a convinced and thoroughgoing believer 
in the rights of the national government. 
Let me take an example in connection with 
Conservation. Big business is no longer an 
affair of any one state. Big business has 
become nationahzed, and the only effective 
way of controlling and directing it and pre- 
venting the abuses in connection with it is 
by having the people nationaHze the govern- 
mental control in order to meet the national- 
ization of the big business itself. People 
speak as if it were an innovation to national- 
ize control by the government of big business. 
The innovation came on the part of the busi- 
ness men who nationahzed their businesses. 
All we wish to do on behalf of the people is 
to meet the nationaHzation of the big busi- 
ness by nationahzed government control. 
All commerce on a scale sufficiently large to 
warrant any control over it by the govern- 
ment nowadays is interstate or foreign com- 
merce; and until this fact is heartily acknowl- 
edged and acted upon by both courts and 
legislative bodies, national and state ahke, 
the interest of the people will suffer. 

In the matter of Conservation, I heartily 
approve of state action where, under our 
form of government, the state, and the state 
only, has the power to act. I cordially join 



56 CONSERVATION 

with those who desire to see the state, within 
its own sphere, take the most advanced 
position in regard to the whole matter of 
Conservation. I have taken exactly this 
attitude in my own state of New York. 
Unfortunately, in the East we are more back- 
ward than the West. Where the state alone 
had the power to act, I have done all I could 
to get it to act in the most advanced manner; 
and where the nation could act, I have done 
all I could to get national action in the same 
direction. Unfortunately, in the East, in this 
matter we have paid the penalty of not having 
our forest lands under national control; and 
the penalty has been severe. At this moment, 
states in New England, states in the South- 
east, and the states through which the Appa- 
lachian Mountains run are paying the penalty 
of the inability of their state governments to 
do what they know ought to be done. The 
forests in the White Mountains and in the 
Appalachian ranges are being maltreated 
because they are under the control of eastern 
state governments; and we are doing our 
best by legislation in Congress at this mo- 
ment, through the help of the western sena- 
tors and congressmen, to get back the 
national control over those forests which the 
nation ought to have; and as the penalty 



CONSERVATION 57 

of undertaking this control so late, the 
nation will be put to an expense of millions 
of dollars to get from the control of states 
that which the whole nation ought always 
to hold under the control of the national 
government. Most of the states — although 
they are old states — have not protected their 
forests, each faihng to act by itself, because 
the action was really the common concern 
of all; and where action is the common con- 
cern of all, experience has shown that it can 
only be profitably undertaken by the national 
government. 

As a result of the impossibility of getting 
such wise action by the several state govern- 
ments in the East, we are doing our best to 
get national legislation under which the 
national government, at the expense of 
millions of dollars, shall undertake to do as 
regards the Appalachians and White Moun- 
tains of the East what it is now doing in the 
Rocky Mountains here out West. It would 
be both a calamity and an absurdity for the 
national government now to fail to do in 
the West the very thing that at a heavy 
pecuniary cost it is trying to do in the East. 
By actual experience in the East we have 
found to our cost that the nation, and not 
the several states, can best guard the interests 



58 CONSERVATION 

of the people in the matter of the forests 
and the waters; and I am at this moment 
doing all I can to increase in the East the 
power of the national government at the 
expense of the power of the several state 
governments of the eastern states, because 
we have found by bitter experience that 
only thus can we adequately protect our 
natural resources. If the national govern- 
ment fails to attempt this duty at the outset, 
it will later on have to pay heavily in order 
to be allowed to take up the work, which, 
because it is done so late, cannot be so well 
done as if it had been begun earlier. 

Water Power 

Take the question of the control of the 
water power sites. The enormous impor- 
tance of water power sites to the future indus- 
trial development of this country has only 
been realized within a very few years. Un- 
fortunately, the realization has come too late 
as regards some of the power sites; but 
many yet remain with which our hands are 
free to deal. We should make it our duty 
to see that hereafter the power sites are kept 
under the control of the general government 
for the use of the people as a whole. Now, 



CONSERVATION 59 

my fellow citizens^ I wish I could impress 
upon you the importance of acting in that 
matter now. You still have the power. If 
you do not act now, your children will rage 
fruitlessly because they have lost the power 
to act with effect, and will be driven to pro- 
pose radical and revolutionary measures if 
the time for taking moderate measures has 
been allowed to go by. True conservatism 
is that conservatism which is also the em- 
bodiment of the wise spirit of progress. It 
is that conservatism which acts conservatively 
before that has happened which will inflame 
men to madness. The fee should remain 
with the people as a whole, while the use is 
leased on terms which shall secure an ample 
reward to the lessees ; which shall encourage 
the development and use of the water power, 
but which shall not create a permanent mo- 
nopoly or permit the development to be anti- 
social, to be in any respect hostile to the pub- 
lic good. Keep the fee so that our children 
shall be able to determine for themselves what 
they will do about the water powers in the 
end. 

There is something fairly comic in the 
appeal made by many of these men in favor 
of state control when you reaHze that the 
great corporations seeking the privileges of 



6o CONSERVATION 

developing the water power in any given 
state are at least as apt to be owned outside 
that state as within it. In this country nowa- 
days capital has a national and not a state 
use. I remember when it became our duty 
when I was President to move against the 
Northern Securities Company, against rail- 
roads running through Wisconsin, Montana, 
Idaho, and Oregon. We found that the cor- 
poration was a corporation of what state ? 
Of New Jersey ! They had been paying 
heed to state's rights, and so it was left to 
New Jersey to protect the rights of Wisconsin 
and Montana. The great corporations which 
are managed and largely owned in the old 
states are those which are most in evidence 
in developing and using the mines and 
water powers and forests of the new terri- 
tories and the new states, from Alaska to 
Arizona. Now, don't misunderstand me. 
These great corporations can do good. I 
am heartily with them in their proposal to 
develop these mines, and I wish to see the 
men at the head of them receive ample re- 
ward for the work they do. All that I ask 
— I do not ask it, I demand it — on behalf 
of the people is that these corporations sub- 
mit to such supervision and control as shall 
insure that, together with the development, 



CONSERVATION 6i 

together with the benefit to the men making 
the development, there shall go good to the 
public to whom belong the resources that 
have been developed. 

I have been genuinely amused during the 
past two months at having arguments pre- 
sented to me on behalf of certain rich men 
from New York, and even Ohio, for instance, 
as to why Colorado and other Rocky Moun- 
tain states should manage their own water 
power sites. Now, many of these men may 
be good citizens according to their lights; 
but naturally enough their special interest 
obscures their sense of the public need; and 
as their object is to escape an efficient con- 
trol, exercised in the interest of all the 
people of the country, they clamor to be put 
under the state instead of under the nation. 
If we are foolish enough to grant their re- 
quests, we shall have ourselves to blame 
when we wake up to find that we have per- 
mitted another privilege to entrench itself 
and another portion of what should be kept 
for the public good to be turned over to in- 
dividuals for purposes of private enrichment. 
During the last session of Congress, bills 
were introduced to transfer the water power 
sites in the national forests and the pubHc 
domain to the control of the states. I can- 



62 CONSERVATION 

not state too strongly my belief that these 
measures are unwise and that it would be 
disastrous to enact them into law. In sub- 
stance, their effect would be to free these 
great special interests from all effective con- 
trol. The passage of such a bill would be 
a victory of the special interests over the 
general welfare, and a long backward step 
down the hill of progress we have of late 
been climbing. 

Our people have for many years proceeded 
upon the assumption that the nation should 
control the public land. It is to this assump- 
tion of national outlook that we owe our 
wisest land legislation, from the Homestead 
Law to the Irrigation Law. The wise use 
of our public domain has always been con- 
ditioned upon national action. The states 
can greatly help, but the nation must take 
the lead, as regards the land, as regards 
the forests and waters; and perhaps pecul- 
iarly in the case of the waters, because 
almost all streams are really interstate 
streams. 

Coal Lands 

The same principle appHes with peculiar 
force to the coal lands, and especially to the 



CONSERVATION 63 

coal lands in Alaska, whose protection and 
ownership by the Federal Government is so 
necessary, both for full and free industrial 
development in the West and for the needs 
of our fleet in the Pacific. The coal mines 
should be leased, not sold, and those who 
mine the coal should pay back a part of the 
profits to the people. Now, understand me 
again. I would have them leased in such 
quantities and on such terms as will guarantee 
an ample reward to the lessee; and I would 
see such control kept in the hands of the 
general government as shall insure the work 
to the lessee accruing not only to his advan- 
tage, but to the advantage of the people of 
the states. It is the right and duty of the 
people to demand the most vigilant trustee- 
ship on the part of that branch of the Federal 
Government in charge of the fuel resources 
of the United States. 

The Neutral Ground 

Remember also that many of the men who 
protest loudly against effective national action 
would be the first to turn round and protest 
against state action, if such action in its 
turn became effective, and would then un- 
hesitatingly invoke the law to show that the 



64 CONSERVATION 

state had no constitutional power to act. I 
have had experience with this attitude. As 
Governor of New York I fought for the pas- 
sage of the franchise tax, and the men from 
the city railroads came to me and said, "If 
you turn us over to the localities, each lo- 
cality will tax us to the death ; each county 
or city will try to get out of us improperly 
as much money as they can, and we will be 
ruined. If we must be put under govern- 
ment control, let it be under the control of 
the state." I concluded that they were right; 
and got the bill passed. Almost before the 
ink was dry, those same men turned round 
and started legal procedure to declare that 
the act was unconstitutional because they had 
been put under state and not local control ! 
Long experience has shown that it is by no 
means impossible, in cases of constitutional 
doubt, to get one set of judicial decisions 
which render it difficult for the nation to act, 
and another set which render it impossible 
for the state to act. In each case the privi- 
leged beneficiaries of the decision invoke 
the aid of those who treat the Constitution, 
not as a healthy aid to growth, but as a fetish 
to prevent growth; and they assail the ad- 
vocates of wise and cautious progress as being 
opponents of the Constitution. Those of 



CONSERVATION 65 

you who are old enough will remember that 
in i860 and 1861 Abraham Lincoln was 
denounced as having violated the Constitu- 
tion because, as his opponents stated, while 
it was undoubtedly unconstitutional to secede, 
it was equally unconstitutional to interfere 
with secession. As I have said before, I am 
a strong believer in efficient national action, 
where such action offers the best hope of 
securing and protecting the interest of the 
whole people as against the interest of a few. 
But I am emphatically in favor of state 
action where state action will best serve the 
purpose; and I am no less emphatically in 
favor of cordial and hearty cooperation be- 
tween the nation and the state where their 
duties are identical or overlap. 

If there is one thing which is more unwise 
than another, it is the creation by legislation, 
by executive, or by judicial action of a neutral 
ground in which neither the state nor the 
nation has power, and which can serve as a 
place of refuge for the lawless man, and 
especially for the lawless man of great wealth, 
who can hire the best legal talent to advise 
him how to keep his abiding place equally 
distant from the uncertain frontiers of both 
state and national power. 



(J^ CONSERVATION 

The Open Range 

I am here at the invitation of the Colorado 
Live Stock Association; and I desire to 
express my appreciation of their steadfast 
stand for decency and progress in the han- 
dling of public lands and national forests. 
They have met and overcome the unrelenting 
opposition of some of the most influential 
stockmen of the state; they have won 
because they have been right. I Mrant to 
express also my appreciation of the work 
of the American National Live Stock As- 
sociation. It has been one of the really 
important forces working toward eflFective 
railroad legislation, while its support of the 
policy of Federal range control has given it 
a large place in national affairs. As an old 
time stockman, I realize that the present 
order of things on the open range cannot 
continue, and that the sure way to protect 
the range itself, prevent the increase of big 
outfits, promote the equitable use of the 
grazing lands, and foster genuine home- 
stead settlement, is to extend over the open 
range a system of range control somewhat 
similar to that now in effect in the national 
forests. 

Whatever system of range control may be 



CONSERVATION e^ 

adopted in detail, there are two things it 
must not do. It must not handicap or 
exclude the small man by requiring him to 
spend more money for fences than he can 
afford, and it must leave every acre that can 
be settled by bona fide homesteaders freely 
open to such settlement. If you find it 
excludes any small man, and you will bring 
any specific facts to me, I will do my best 
to remedy it. In speaking to this audience 
I do not suppose that there is a very large 
proportion of the homestead men present; 
but I know that all of you agree with me that 
it is the homestead men, the small settlers, 
the actual homemaker, whose interests we 
must do most to preserve. I do not believe 
that a single acre of our public lands should 
hereafter pass into private ownership, except 
for the single purpose of homestead settle- 
ment; and I know that the stockmen stand 
with me in their desire to remove every ob- 
stacle from the path of the genuine home- 
steader, and to put every possible obstacle 
in the pathway of the man who tries to get 
public lands by misrepresentation or fraud. 
This is absolutely necessary on the agri- 
cultural lands. It is at least equally neces- 
sary on the mineral lands. It would be a 
calamity whose baleful effect on the average 



68 CONSERVATION 

citizen we can scarcely exaggerate, if the 
great stores of coal and other mineral fuels 
still owned by our people in Alaska and 
elsewhere should pass into the unregulated 
ownership of monopolistic corporations. 

The Forest Service 

You progressive stockmen have stood 
heartily by the Conservation movement, 
and with you have stood many others through- 
out the West, to whom large credit is due, 
such as the lumbermen in Washington and 
Oregon, the irrigators in California, and 
the supporters of the country life movement 
in and around Spokane. I want to make 
my acknowledgments in particular to the 
Colorado Forestry Association, which has 
supported the forest work of the government 
with such unselfish zeal. The Forest Service 
has enemies because it is efficient. It would 
have no enemies if it did not do anything. 
Some of its best work has been met by the 
bitterest opposition. For example, it has 
done a real service by blocking the road 
against the grabbers of water power for 
themselves, and again by standing like a rock 
against the demands of bogus mining concerns 
to exploit the national forests. I have always 



CONSERVATION 69 

done my best to help the genuine miner. 
I believe that one of the first duties of the 
government is to encourage honest mining 
on the public lands. But it is equally im- 
portant to enforce the law firmly against 
the particularly dangerous class which makes 
its living off the public through fraudulent 
mining schemes. 

I have already spoken of the claims made 
without justification that the Forest Service 
keeps the actual homesteader out of the 
enjoyment of the agricultural lands. Much 
of the opposition to the Forest Service, like 
much of the opposition to Conservation, takes 
the form of direct misrepresentation. For 
example, the cry is often heard that the 
national forests inclose great areas of agri- 
cultural land, which are thus put beyond the 
reach of settlement. This statement seems 
plausible only till the facts are known. In 
the first place. Congress has especially pro- 
vided that whatever agricultural lands there 
may be in any national forest shall be open, 
under proper safeguards, to homestead settle- 
ment. And in the second place, when the 
opponents of Conservation are asked to point 
out the great stretches of inclosed agricultural 
land on the ground and in the presence of ex- 
perts, instead of in speeches in a hall, they fail. 



70 CONSERVATION 

The Reclamation Service 

The National Irrigation Congress is to hold 
a session in the city of Pueblo late in Septem- 
ber. I am keenly sorry that I could not have 
accepted the invitation to be present; but 
you in Denver v^ill pardon me if I put you 
first. I could have gone to Pueblo; but in 
order to make my engagements possible to 
fulfill then it w^as out of the question for me 
to go back to Colorado at this time. I 
sincerely regret it. I have never been to 
Colorado but that I have enjoyed myself. 
I must, however, be in the East at that time. 
But since I cannot be present then to ex- 
press my keen, long-held, and deep-felt 
interest in the reclamation of arid lands by 
the Federal Government, I desire to do so 
now. There is no more effective instru- 
ment for the making of homes than the 
United States Reclamation Service, and no 
government bureau while I was President 
had reached a higher standard of efficiency, 
integrity, and devotion to the public wel- 
fare. 

Like the Forest Service, the Reclamation 
Service has clashed with certain private 
interests, and has had to pay the penalty 
of its service to the public in the form of 



CONSERVATION 71 

bitter opposition from those with whose 
profit it has interfered. The cry has been 
raised against it that the government must 
not do for its citizens at a less cost what 
private interests are ready to make them pay 
for at higher prices. And those of you who 
have been connected with getting a water 
supply for a big city know what kind of 
opposition that is to be encountered. Now, I 
believe fully in the private development of 
irrigation projects which the government 
cannot undertake There is a large and 
legitimate field for such work. But the 
essential thing is to make homes on the land 
rather than to enable individuals to profit 
from the necessities of the men who make 
those homes. Now, I put the issue straight. 
If you believe primarily in the mere amassing 
of money in the aggregate by the citizens of 
the state, then you are right in supporting 
a system under which money will be made 
by private corporations which distribute the 
water at the expense of the users. If you 
believe, as far as may be just, in the welfare 
of the average citizen, you will favor a system 
that will give him, as long as he works hard 
and deserves it, the first chance of getting 
water from the government at as near cost 
price as may be. There is no more warrant 



72 CONSERVATION 

for objection to the reclamation of arid lands 
by the government than there would be for 
protest against the government for patenting 
agricultural lands directly to the actual 
settler instead of settling them in block 
through a middleman who could make a 
profit from the transaction. The men who 
assert their right to get something for them- 
selves at the cost of the community instead 
of by service to the community we have 
always had with us, and doubtless we always 
shall have; but there is no reason why we 
should yield to them. The Reclamation 
Service has not done so, and that is the chief 
reason for the attacks upon it. 

I do not think that there is one among 
you who is a better and a more thorough- 
going Westerner than I am. There has been 
no support given to the Conservation policies 
so welcome as that which came from the 
West, and none in the West more welcome 
than that which came from Colorado. There 
are men and organizations in Colorado, and 
I mention Delta in particular, whose support 
of the Conservation policies has been of the 
greatest value to the nation. It has not 
always been an easy thing for them to stand 
for what was right; to stand for the real 
ultimate good as against the seeming tern- 



CONSERVATION 73 

porary good; but they have stood for it 
steadily, nevertheless. 

I have told you how we are working in 
the East trying to make good our mistakes; 
that now we have bills for passage through 
the national legislature endeavoring to get 
back for the nation the control which other 
bills have been introduced to do away with 
in the West. Gentlemen for whom I have 
personally the friendhest feelings introduced 
bills to try to get the nation to do in the West 
the very things which we are now proposing 
that the nation shall pay many millions of 
dollars to undo in the East. 

From the standpoint of Conservation the 
East has wasted much of its own superb 
endowment; and as an American, as a lover 
of the West, I hope that the West will profit 
by the East's bitter lesson, and will not 
repeat the mistakes of the East. The East 
has wasted its resources; it suffers from the 
effect of this waste, which now puts it at a 
disadvantage compared to the West, and it 
is sorry. Most of the capital and very many 
of the men now attempting to monopolize 
your western resources are from the East. 
The West should learn the lesson of the 
East's mistakes; and it should^ remember 
that Conservation in the West will help the 



74 CONSERVATION 

West first and most, and that the movement 
for Conservation is most earnest, most vig- 
orous, and most effective in the West and 
among western men. That is one strong 
reason why the Conservation policy has come 
to stay. 

I have just come back from a very inter- 
esting trip in the Old World. I spent a year 
of comparative holiday in Africa, and a 
quarter of a year of fairly vigorous work 
in Europe, during most of which it seemed 
to be the kind purpose of my hosts to make 
me feel thoroughly at home. {Laughter and 
applause^ 

Although I have always felt a genuine 
friendliness for foreign peoples, and have 
come back with that feeling increased, yet 
I feel thankful that I can with sincerity say 
that with all our faults and shortcomings — 
and I know them well, and have striven to 
help in correcting a certain number of them in 
my time — there is not anywhere else on the 
face of the earth a land where life is so su- 
premely well worth living, where the chance 
for the average man is as good, as it is here. 
(Cheers.) There is any amount that needs 
to be improved — and I do not think much 
of you if you simply cheer the fact that I say 
you are mighty good people, and then go 



CONSERVATION 75 

home and do not try to make things better; 
but I think it is perfectly possible to com- 
bine a full knowledge of the evil that exists, 
not only with a determination to cut out that 
evil, but with a clear understanding of the 
great good that exists also. There were 
two things that struck me especially abroad. 
One was that, to the average man with 
whom life had gone hard, America stood as 
a name that symbolized hope; that sym- 
bolized the golden chance of allowing a man 
or woman to lead his or her life fully and 
freely to the utmost possible advantage to 
himself or herself and to his or her fellow 
men and women. America stood as a name 
of hope to the average man on the other side. 
But there is this also that was true. Almost 
every man whom I met on the other side 
and conversed with, and who was a well- 
wisher of America, would after a while ask 
me anxiously about some features of national 
corruption in America, of business corrup- 
tion or of political corruption; and every 
reactionary, every enemy of democratic gov- 
ernment, every opponent of free institutions 
hailed with sardonic laughter each and every 
such instance of corruption in business or 
in politics as proof that it was an empty 
dream to believe that people can govern them- 



76 CONSERVATION 

selves honestly, wisely, and well. It is prob- 
ably true that if we are unwilling to insist 
on honesty for our own sakes, we shall not 
do it for the sake of others; and yet, my 
friends, I think that we here should realize 
that we are not only custodians of the hopes 
of our children, but that in a peculiar sense 
we are custodians of the hope of the world ; 
and shame, triple shame, is ours if we shatter 
the ideal of the world by shattering the world's 
belief in the possibilities of popular govern- 
ment on a continental scale. And I ask 
that you here do not confine yourselves 
simply to hearing me and enjoying a little 
thrill of pleasure over the sentiments ex- 
pressed, but that you, men and women of 
Colorado, will go back to your homes and 
your daily lives with the resolute purpose to 
war for honesty in its deepest and broadest 
significance both in our business and in our 
politics; not only for our own sake, not only 
for the sake of our children who inherit the 
land after us, but for the sake of the peoples 
of the world who stand and watch this great 
experiment of free democracy in the West, 
so that their hope shall not be dead. 



NATURAL RESOURCES 

SPEECH AT ST. PAUL 
6 September, 19 lo 

Minnesota has almost always taken the 
lead in any great work, and Minnesota has 
been one of the first to take hold of the Con- 
servation policy in practical shape; and she 
has done a great work and set an admirable 
example to the rest of us. It is a work well set 
forth in your Governor's address yesterday; 
and I am glad this Congress is held in such a 
state where we can listen to such an address 
made by a Governor who has a right to make 
it. Much that I have to say on the general 
policy of Conservation will be but a repetition 
of what was so admirably said on this general 
policy by the President of the United States 
yesterday. In particular all true friends 
of Conservation should be in heartiest agree- 
ment with the policy which the President 
laid down in connection with the coal, iron, 
and phosphate lands; and I am glad to see 
that at its last session Congress finally com- 
pleted the work of separating the surface title 
to the land from the mineral beneath it. 

77 



78 NATURAL RESOURCES 

Now, my friends, America's reputation for 
efficiency stands deservedly high throughout 
the world. We are efficient probably to the 
full limits that are permitted any nation to 
attain by the methods hitherto used. The 
average American is an efficient man who can 
do his business; and it is recognized through- 
out the world that this is so. There is great 
reason to be proud of our achievements; 
and yet no reason to believe that we cannot 
excel our past. Through a practically un- 
restrained individualism, we have reached 
a pitch of literally unexampled material 
prosperity, although the distribution of this 
prosperity leaves much to be desired from 
the standpoint of justice and fair dealing. 
But we have not only allowed the individual 
a free hand, which was in the main right; 
we have also allowed great corporations to 
act as though they were individuals, and to 
exercise the rights of individuals, in addition 
to using the vast combined power of high 
organization and enormous wealth for their 
own advantages. This development of cor- 
porate action, it is true, is doubtless in large 
part responsible for the gigantic development 
of our natural resources, but it is not less 
responsible for waste, destruction, and mo- 
nopoly on an equally gigantic scale. 



NATURAL RESOURCES 79 

The method of reckless and uncontrolled 
private use and waste has done for us all the 
good it ever can ; and it is time to put an end 
to it before it does all the evil it easily may. 
We have passed the time when heedless waste 
and destruction and arrogant monopoly are 
longer permissible. Henceforth we must 
seek national efficiency by a new and better 
way, by the way of the orderly development 
and use, coupled with the preservation, of 
our natural resources, by making the most of 
what we have for the benefit of all of us, 
instead of leaving the sources of material 
prosperity open to indiscriminate exploita- 
tion. These are some of the reasons why it 
is wise that we should abandon the old point 
of view, and why Conservation has become 
a great moral issue in becoming a patriotic 
duty. 

Waterways 

One of the greatest of our Conservation 
problems is the wise and prompt development 
and use of the waterways of this nation. 
There are classes of bulky freight which can 
always go cheaper and better by water if 
there is an adequate waterway; and the 
existence of such a type of waterway in itself 
helps to regulate railroad rates. The Twin 



8o NATURAL RESOURCES 

Cities, lying as they do at the headwaters 
of the Mississippi, are not upon the direct 
Hne of the proposed Lakes-to-the-Gulf deep 
waterway. And yet Minnesota, with its 
vast iron resources and its need of abundance 
of coal, has peculiar interest in that problem; 
and the Twin Cities, therefore, have their 
own personal concern in the deepening and 
regulation of the Mississippi to the mouth of 
the Missouri and to the Gulf. I have spoken 
of how progressive Minnesota is and how 
progressive these cities are; but there are 
other progressive cities in the West, too. I 
have just come from Kansas City. The 
merchants there have themselves undertaken, 
by raising more than a million dollars, to 
start the improvement of the waterway at 
their door, so that they shall be able to 
benefit by it. It is sometimes said that the 
waterway projects are backed by people 
who are delighted to see the government 
spend its money, but who are not willing to 
show their faith in the proposition by spend- 
ing their own. Kansas City is spending its 
own. The project for a great trunk water- 
way, an arm of the sea, extending from the 
Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes, should 
not be abandoned. A report thereon in full 
should be made to the government, so that 



NATURAL RESOURCES 8i 

the government can act in the interest of the 
whole people and without regard to the pres- 
sure of special interests. But, subject to the 
action of such a body, the Lakes-to-the-Gulf 
deep waterway, and the development of the 
rivers which flow into it, should be pushed to 
completion vigorously and without delay. 

But we must recognize at the outset that 
there are certain conditions without which 
the people cannot hope to derive from it the 
benefits they have a right to expect. In 
nearly every river city from St. Paul to the 
Gulf the water front is controlled by the rail- 
ways. Nearly every artificial waterway in the 
United States, either directly or indirectly, 
is under the same control. It goes without 
saying that (unless the people prevent it in 
advance) the railways will always attempt 
to take control of our water^vays as fast as 
they are improved and completed. I do not 
mention this to blame them in the least, but 
to blame us for permitting them to do so. 
If Uncle Sam cannot take care of himself, 
then there is no particular reason why any 
railroad man should act as his guardian, and 
if he attempted the feat, he would merely find 
himself alone among other railroad men, 
and Uncle Sam would not be materially 
benefited. Uncle Sam has got to do the 



82 NATURAL RESOURCES 

job himself. We must see to it that adequate 
terminals are provided in every city and town 
on every improved waterway, terminals open 
under reasonable conditions to the use of 
every citizen and rigidly protected against 
monopoly; and we must compel the rail- 
roads to cooperate with the waterways 
continuously, effectively, and under reason- 
able conditions. Unless we do so, the rail- 
way lines will refuse to deliver freight to the 
boat lines, either openly or by imposing pro- 
hibitory conditions; and the waterways, 
once improved, will do comparatively little 
for the benefit of the people who pay the 
bill. 

Adequate terminals properly controlled 
and open through lines by rail and boat are 
two absolutely essential conditions to the 
usefulness of inland waterway development. 
I believe, furthermore, that the railways 
should be prohibited from owning, control- 
ling, or carrying any interest in the boat 
lines on our rivers, unless under the strictest 
regulation and control of the Interstate 
Commerce Commission, so that the ship- 
per's interests may be fully protected. 

Now, here another word in supplement. 
You, the people, ought not to sit supine and 
let the railroads gain control of the boat lines 



NATURAL RESOURCES 83 

and then turn around and say that the men at 
the head of the railroads are very bad people. 
If you leave it open to them to control boat 
lines, some of them are sure to do so; and 
it is to our interest that the best among 
them should do so. Don't let any of them 
do it, excepting under conditions we lay 
down. In other words, when you of your 
own fault permit the rules of the game to be 
such that you are absolutely certain to get 
the worst of it at the hands of some one else, 
don't blame the other man; change the rules 
of the game. 

Drainage 

Take the question of drainage. It is 
almost as important in certain states as irri- 
gation is in other states. Where the drain- 
age area of the swamp and overflow lands is 
wholly within the lines of a particular state 
it may be well, at least for the present, to 
leave the handling of it to state or private 
action; but where such a drainage area is 
included in two or more states, the only wise 
course is to have the Federal Government act. 
Land should be deeded from the state back 
to the Federal Government, and it then should 
take whatever action is necessary. Much 
of this work must be done by the nation in 



84 NATURAL RESOURCES 

any case as an integral part of inland water- 
way development. It affords a most prom- 
ising field for cooperation between the states 
and the nation. 

The National Forests 

The people of the United States believe 
in the complete and rounded development of 
inland waterways for all the useful purposes 
they can be made to serve. They believe 
also, as you here in Minnesota have done, 
in forest protection and forest extension. 
The fight for our National Forest in the West 
has been won, and if, after winning it, we now 
go ahead and lose it, that is our affair. We 
are not going to do it. After a campaign 
in which the women of Minnesota did work 
which should secure to them the perpetual 
gratitude of their state, Minnesota won her 
National Forest, and will keep it; but the 
fight to create the Southern Appalachian and 
White Mountain Forests in the East is not 
yet over. The bill has passed the House, 
and will come before the Senate for a vote 
next February. The people of the United 
States, regardless of party or section, should 
stand solidly behind it, and see that their 
representatives do likewise. And, friends, 



NATURAL RESOURCES 85 

in the East, thanks to the fact that our ances- 
tors did not have sufficient foresight, the 
nation is now being obliged to spend great 
sums of money to take back from the eastern 
states what those eastern states have shown 
themselves unable adequately to protect and 
handle. I have been a Governor of an eastern 
state myself, and we of the states of the East 
could not do the work as well as the national 
government, and we are now permitting the 
national government to take these lands and 
do the work. In the light of what we are 
now doing in the East it seems to me the 
wildest folly to ask us to start in the West to 
repeat the same blunders that are now being 
remedied. My language shall at least be 
free from ambiguity. 

If any proof were needed that forest pro- 
tection is a national duty, the recent destruc- 
tion of forests in the West by fire would supply 
it. Even with the aid of the army added to 
that of the Forest Service, the loss has been 
severe. Without either it would have been 
vastly greater. 

But the Forest Service does more than 
protect the national forests against fire. 
It makes them practically and increasingly 
useful as well. During the last year for 
which I have the figures, the national forests 



86 NATURAL RESOURCES 

were used by 22,000 cattlemen, with their 
herds, 5000 sheepmen, with their flocks, 
5000 timbermen, with their crews, and 45,000 
miners; and yet people will tell you that they 
have been shut up from popular use. More 
than 5000 persons used them for other special 
industries. Nearly 34,000 settlers had the 
free use of wood. The total resident popula- 
tion of the national forests is about a quarter 
of a million, which is larger than the popu- 
lation of certain states. More than 700,000 
acres of agricultural land have been patented 
or listed for patent within the forests, and the 
reports of the forest officers show that more 
than 400,000 people a year use the forests 
for recreation, camping, hunting, fishing, and 
similar purposes. All this is done, of course, 
without injury to the timber, which has a 
value of at least a thousand million dollars. 
Moreover, the national forests protect the 
water supply of a thousand cities and towns, 
about 800 irrigation projects, and more than 
300 power projects, not counting the use of 
water for these and other purposes by indi- 
vidual settlers. I think that hereafter we 
may safely disregard any statements that the 
national forests are withdrawn from settle- 
ment and use. 



NATURAL RESOURCES 87 

A Country Life Institute 

The investigations of the Country Life 
Commissions have led the farmers of this 
country to realize that they have not been 
getting their fair share of progress and all 
that it brings. Some of our farming com- 
munities in the Mississippi Valley and in 
the middle West have made marvelous 
progress, yet even the best of them, like 
communities of every other kind, are not 
beyond improvement, while much needs to 
be done in some other sections to improve 
country life. As yet we know comparatively 
little of the basic facts of rural civilization, 
compared with those of industrial life. The 
means for better farming we have studied 
with care; but to better living on the farm 
and to better business on the farm the farmers 
themselves have given scant attention. I 
mean by that, having the farmer use the 
middleman where it is to the farmer's advan- 
tage to do so, and not to be used by the middle- 
man chiefly to the advantage of the middle- 
man. One of the most urgent needs of our 
civiHzation is that the farmers themselves 
should undertake to get for themselves a 
better knowledge along these lines, and then 
to apply it. Sir Horace Plunkett, an Irish- 



88 NATURAL RESOURCES 

man, for many years a Wyoming cattleman 
and now devoting himself in Ireland to the 
country life problem there, has suggested 
in his recent book on the "Country Life 
Problem in America" the creation of a Coun- 
try Life Institute as a center where the work 
and knowledge of the whole world concern- 
ing country life may be brought together 
for the use of every nation. I am strongly 
in sympathy with this idea, and hope to see 
it carried out with the cooperation and assist- 
ance of our own people. Last spring, while 
visiting the capital of Hungary — Buda- 
Pesth — I was immensely impressed by the 
Museum of Country Life, containing an 
extraordinary series of studies in agriculture, 
in stock-raising, in forestry, in mining. It 
was one of the most interesting places I have 
ever visited. The exhibits were of the ut- 
most practical importance, and were also 
intensely interesting and instructive. I felt 
rather ashamed that I, a citizen of what we 
suppose to be a "very go-ahead country," 
should be in Hungary obliged to confess we 
had nothing at all like that in our own coun- 
try. I greatly wish we had such a museum 
in Washington; and some of your farmer 
congressmen ought to get a full and detailed 
report of this Buda-Pesth museum to be 



NATURAL RESOURCES 89 

printed for distribution in a public docu- 
ment. I would like to see a study made of 
such museums, so that we may take what is 
good of them for our own use in America. 

Human Efficiency 

As a people we have not yet learned to 
economize. One of the virtues we Americans 
need is thrift. It is a mere truism to say 
that luxury and extravagance are not good 
for a nation. So far as they affect character, 
the loss they cause may be beyond compu- 
tation. But in the material sense there is a 
loss greater than is caused by both extrava- 
gance and luxury put together. I mean the 
needless, useless, and excessive loss to our 
people from premature death and avoidable 
diseases. Wholly apart from the grief, suffer- 
ing, and wretchedness which they cause, 
the material loss each year has been calcu- 
lated at nearly twice what it costs to run the 
Federal Government. In addition to the 
state and city health officers and organiza- 
tions, there is urgently needed a Federal 
Bureau of Health, to act, so far as the na- 
tional government properly may, to relieve 
our people from this dreadful burden. 



90 NATURAL RESOURCES^ 

The National Conservation Commission 

One of the most important meetings in 
our recent history was that of the Governors 
in the White House in May, 1908, to consider 
the Conservation question. By the advice of 
the Governors the meeting was followed by 
the appointment of a National Conservation 
Commission. The meeting of the Governors 
directed the attention of the country to Con- 
servation as nothing else could have done, 
while the work of the Commission gave the 
movement definiteness and suppHed it with 
a practical program. Now, my friends, 
so far I have had nothing but praise to speak 
of Minnesota. I cannot continue to speak 
only words of praise. At the moment when 
the Commission was ready to begin the 
campaign for putting its program into effect, 
an amendment to the Sundry Civil Bill was 
introduced by a congressman from Minne- 
sota v/ith the purpose to put a stop to the 
work so admirably begun. Congress passed 
the amendment. Its object was to put an 
end to the work of a number of commissions, 
which had been appointed by the President, 
and whose contribution to the public welfare 
had been simply incalculable. Among these 
were the commission for reorganizing the 



NATURAL RESOURCES 91 

business methods of the government, the 
Public Lands Commission, the Country Life 
Commission, and the National Conservation 
Commission itself When I signed the Sun- 
dry Civil Bill containing this amendment, I 
transmitted with it as my last official act a 
memorandum declaring that the amendment 
was void, because it was unconstitutional 
interference with the rights of the Executive, 
and that if I were to remain President, I 
would pay to it no attention whatever. 

The National Conservation Commission 
thereupon became dormant. The suspen- 
sion of its work came at a most unfortunate 
time, and there was serious danger that the 
progress already made would be lost. At 
this critical moment the National Conserva- 
tion Association was organized. It took up 
the work which otherwise would not have 
been done. If it had not done it, we would 
not have had this meeting here; and it exer- 
cised a most useful influence in preventing 
bad legislation, in securing the introduction 
of better Conservation measures at the past 
session of Congress, and in promoting the 
passage of wise laws. It deserves the con- 
fidence and support of every citizen interested 
in the wise development and preservation of 
our natural resources, and in preventing 



92 NATURAL RESOURCES 

them from passing into the hands of uncon- 
trolled monopolies. It joins with the Na- 
tional Conservation Congress in holding this 
meeting. I am here by the joint invitation of 
both. 

Pan-American Conservation 

When the government of the United 
States awoke to the idea of Conservation 
and saw that it was good, it lost no time in 
communicating the advantages of the new 
point of view to its immediate neighbors 
among the nations. A North American 
Conservation Conference was held in Wash- 
ington, and the cooperation of Canada and 
Mexico in the great problem of developing 
the resources of the continent for the benefit 
of its people was asked and promised. The 
nations upon our northern and southern 
boundaries wisely realized that their oppor- 
tunity to conserve the natural resources was 
better than ours, because with them destruc- 
tion and monopolization had not gone so 
far as they had with us. So it is with the 
republics of Central and South America. 
Obviously, they are on the verge of a period 
of great material progress. The development 
of their natural resources — their forests, 
their mines, their water, and their soils — 



NATURAL RESOURCES 93 

will create enormous wealth. It is to the 
mutual interests of the United States and 
our sister American republics that this de- 
velopment should be wisely done. Our 
manufacturing industries offer a market for 
more and more of their natural wealth and 
raw material, while they will increasingly 
desire to meet that demand in commercial 
exchange. The more we buy from them, 
the more we shall sell to them. Their pros- 
perity is inseparably involved with our own. 
Thank Heaven, we of this hemisphere are 
now beginning to reaHze, what in the end 
the whole world will reahze, that normally it 
is a good thing for a nation to have its neigh- 
bor nations prosper. We of the United 
States are genuinely and heartily pleased to 
see growth and prosperity in Canada, in 
Mexico, in South America. 

I wish I could impress upon certain small 
repubHcs of the South, whose history has not 
always been happy, that all we desire is that 
they shall be prosperous and peaceful. We 
do not want to interfere; it is particularly a 
thing we disHke to do. All that we ask of any 
nation on this continent is that it shall be 
prosperous and peaceful, able to do reason- 
able justice w^ithin its own boundaries to the 
stranger within its gates; and any nation 



94 NATURAL RESOURCES 

able to do that can count upon our heartiest 
and most cordial support. 

It is clear that unless the governments of 
our southern neighbors take steps in the 
near future by wise legislation to control the 
development and use of their natural re- 
sources, they will probably fall into the 
hands of concessionaires and promoters, 
whose single purpose, without regard to the 
permanent welfare of the land in which they 
work, will be to make the most possible 
money in the shortest possible time. There 
will be shameful waste, destructive loss, and 
shortsighted disregard of the future, as we have 
learned by bitter experience here at home. 

Unless the governments of all the Ameri- 
can republics, including our own, enact in 
time such laws as will both protect their 
natural wealth and promote their legitimate 
and reasonable development, future genera- 
tions will owe their misfortunes to us of 
to-day. A great patriotic duty calls upon 
us. We owe it to ourselves and to them to 
give the American republics all the help we 
can. The cases in which we have failed 
should be no less instructive than the cases 
in which we have succeeded. With prompt 
action and good will the task of saving the re- 
sources for the people is full of hope for us all. 



NATURAL RESOURCES 95 

State and Federal Control 

But while we of the United States are 
anxious, as I believe we are able, to be of 
assistance to others, there are problems of 
our own which must not be overlooked. 
One of the most important Conservation 
questions of the moment relates to the con- 
trol of water power monopoly in the public 
interest. There is apparent to the judicious 
observer a distinct tendency on the part of 
our opponents to cloud the issue by raising 
the question of state as against Federal juris- 
diction. We are ready to meet this issue, if 
it is forced upon us. But there is no hope 
for the plain people in such conflicts of juris- 
dictions. The essential question is not one 
of hairsplitting legal technicalities. It is not 
really a question of state against nation. 
It is really a question of special corporate 
interests against the popular interests of this 
nation. If it were not for those special cor- 
porate interests, you never would have heard 
of the question of state as against the nation. 
The question is simply this: Who can best 
regulate the special interests for the public 
good ? Most of the great corporations, and 
almost all of those that can be legitimately 
called the great predatory corporations, have 



96 NATURAL RESOURCES 

interstate affiliations. Therefore, they are 
out of reach of effective state control, and 
fall of necessity within the Federal jurisdic- 
tion. One of the prime objects of those 
among them that are grasping and greedy is 
to avoid any effective control, either by state 
or nation; and they advocate at this time 
state control simply because they believe it 
to be the least effective. If it should prove 
effective, many of those now advocating it 
would themselves turn round and say that 
such control was unconstitutional. I had 
my own experience. I will give you an ex- 
ample of it. When I was Governor of New 
York there came up a bill to tax the fran- 
chises of certain big street railway corpora- 
tions. As originally introduced, the bill pro- 
vided that the taxation should be imposed 
by the several counties and localities in which 
those corporations did business. Represent- 
atives of the corporations came to me and 
said that this was going to work a great 
hardship upon them; that the state au- 
thority would be more just than the local 
authority; especially if a railroad were to 
run through two or three towns or counties, 
they would each endeavor to get the whole 
benefit of the whole taxation for their own 
locahty; and, in the name of justice, I ought 



NATURAL RESOURCES 97 

to agree to have the state, and not the locali- 
ties, made the taxing power. I thought 
their plea just, and recommended and sanc- 
tioned the change, and the bill was made a 
law; and those same corporations instantly 
entered suit against it upon the ground that 
it was unconstitutional, — that it was un- 
constitutional to take the power of taxation 
away from the localities and give it to the 
state — and they carried the suit up to the 
Supreme Court, where, during my own term 
as President, it was decided against them. 
In the great fight of the people to drive the 
special interests from the domination of our 
government, the nation is stronger, and its 
jurisdiction is more effective, than that of any 
state. 

And now I want to say another thing 
which the representatives of those corpora- 
tions did not at the moment believe, but 
which, I am sure, in the end they will find 
out: because of the fact that the Federal 
Government is better able to exact justice 
from them, I also believe that it is less apt 
in some sudden gust of popular passion to 
do injustice to them. 

I want you to understand my position. I 
do not think that you will misunderstand it. I 
will do my utmost to secure the rights of every 

H 



98 NATURAL RESOURCES 

corporation. If a corporation is improperly 
attacked, I will stand up for it to the best of 
my ability. I would stand up for it even 
though I were sure that the bulk of the people 
were misguided enough for the moment to 
take the wrong side and be against it. I should 
fight hard to see that the people, through 
the national government, did full justice to 
the corporations; but I do not want the 
national government to depend upon their 
good will to get justice for the people. Most 
of these great corporations are in a large part 
financed and owned in the Atlantic states, 
and it is rather a comic fact that many of 
the chief and most serious upholders of states' 
rights in the present controversy are big 
business men who live in other states. 
The most eflFective weapon is Federal laws 
and the Federal executive. That is why 
I so strongly oppose the demand to turn 
these matters over to the states. It is fun- 
damentally a demand against the interest of 
the plain people, of the people of small 
means, against the interest of our children 
and our children's children; and it is pri- 
marily in the interest of the great corpora- 
tions which desire to escape effective gov- 
ernment control. 

And I ask you to consider two more things 



NATURAL RESOURCES 99 

in connection with this. Waters run. They 
do not stay in one state. That fact seems 
elementary; but it tends to be forgotten. I 
have just come from Kansas. Practically 
all the water in Kansas runs into Kansas 
through another state, and out of it into other 
states. You cannot have effective control of 
a watershed unless the same power controls 
all the watersheds. Sometimes the water 
actually runs out of one country into another. 
One of the great irrigation projects of Mon- 
tana has been delayed because waters that 
make the Milk River rise in Montana, flow 
north into Canada, and then come back 
into Montana. You cannot settle the mat- 
ter except through the national government. 
Take the experience of other nations. Take 
the experience of the little republic of 
Switzerland. It actually tried what some 
of our people wish to try; it actually tried 
the experiment of letting each canton handle 
its own water; and the conflict of jurisdiction 
wrought so much injustice that it became 
necessary about nine years ago for the 
national government to assume control of 
the waters of Switzerland on the explicit 
ground that all of the waters belonged to 
all of the citizens of the Svdss nation. Now, 
I am not asking that we go ahead recklessly; 



100 NATURAL RESOURCES 

but I am only asking that we do not go back- 
ward where other countries have gone ahead. 

7he Conservation Fight 

As the President yesterday pointed out, 
one of the difficulties that we have to meet in 
our fight for putting into practice the Con- 
servation idea is that our aim is continu- 
ously misrepresented, that the effort is made 
to show that we are anxious to retard de- 
velopment. It has been no slight task to 
bring before ninety million people a great 
conception like that of Conservation, and 
convince them that it is right. This much 
we have accomplished; but there remains 
much to be cleared up, and many mis- 
understandings to be removed. These mis- 
understandings are due in part at least to 
direct misrepresentation by the men to 
whose interest it is that Conservation should 
not prosper. For example, we find it con- 
stantly said by men who should know bet- 
ter that temporary withdrawals, such as the 
withdrawals of coal lands, will permanently 
check development. Yet the fact is that these 
withdrawals have no purpose except to pre- 
vent the coal lands from passing into private 
ownership until Congress can pass laws to 



NATURAL RESOURCES loi 

open them to development under conditions 
just alike to the public and to the man who 
will do the developing. Understand here, if 
there is any doubt as to whether the con- 
ditions are liberal enough to the men who 
are doing the developing, I would always 
solve the doubt in favor of liberality to those 
men. I want to give them every chance to 
do well for themselves, but I want to see that 
in doing well for themselves they also do 
well for the rest of us. If there is delay, 
the responsibility for it rests, not on the 
men who made the withdrawals to protect 
the public interests, but on those who pre- 
vent Congress from passing wise legislation 
and so putting an end to the need for with- 
drawals. 

Abuses committed in the name of a just 
cause are familiar to all of us. Many un- 
wise things are done and many unwise meas- 
ures are advocated in the name of Conserva- 
tion, either through ignorance, or by those 
whose interest Hes not in promoting the 
movement, but in retarding it. For ex- 
ample, to stop water power development by 
needless refusal to issue permits for water 
power or private irrigation works on the 
public lands inevitably leads many men, 
friendly to Conservation and believers in its 



102 NATURAL RESOURCES 

general principles, to assume that its prac- 
tical application is necessarily a check upon 
progress. Nothing could be more mistaken. 
The idea, widely circulated of late, that Con- 
servation means locking up the natural re- 
sources for the exclusive use of later genera- 
tions, is wholly mistaken. Our purpose is 
to make full use of these resources, but to 
consider our sons and daughters as well as 
ourselves, just as a farmer uses his farm in 
ways to preserve its future usefulness. Con- 
servation is the road to national efficiency, 
and it stands for wise and ample develop- 
ment. 

But in spite of these difficulties, most of 
which are doubtless inevitable in any move- 
ment of this kind, Conservation has made 
marvelous progress. I have been astounded 
and delighted on my return from abroad at 
the progress made while I was away. We 
have a right to congratulate ourselves on this 
marvelous progress; but there is no reason 
for believing the fight is won. In the begin- 
ning, the special interests, who are our chief 
opponents in the Conservation fight, paid 
little heed to the movement, because they 
neither understood it nor saw that if it won 
they must lose. But with the progress of 
Conservation in the minds of the people, the 



NATURAL RESOURCES 103 

fight IS getting sharper. The nearer we ap- 
proach to victory, the bitterer the opposition 
that we must meet and the greater the need 
for caution and watchfulness. Open oppo- 
sition we can overcome, but I warn you 
especially against the men who come to 
congresses such as this, ostensibly as dis- 
interested citizens, but actually as the paid 
agents of the special interests. I wish to 
say that I heartily approve of the attitude of 
any corporation which comes here openly 
and because it is interested in the delibera- 
tions of a meeting such as this; which comes 
hither to advocate, by its openly accredited 
agents, views which it believes the meeting 
should have in mind. I approve of the cor- 
poration that does that; and I would despise 
any of our people who feared instantly to 
give the most ample and respectful hearing 
and real consideration to any such plea thus 
put forward. The corporation, through its 
agents, not only has a right to be heard, 
but if it does not desire to be heard, we 
should see that its case should be presented. 
My protest is not against the man who 
comes here as the corporation agent; but 
against the man who comes here ostensibly 
for something else but really is for the 
corporation. 



104 NATURAL RESOURCES 

This congress is a direct appeal to the 
patriotism of our whole people. The nation 
wisely looks to such gatherings for counsel 
and leadership. Let that leadership be 
sound, definite, practical, and on the side of 
all the people. It would be no small mis- 
fortune if a meeting such as this should ever 
fall into the hands of the open enemies or 
false friends of the great movement which it 
represents. 

Conclusion 

It is our duty and our desire to make this 
land of ours a better home for the race; but 
our duty does not stop there. We must also 
work for a better nation to live in this 
better land. The development and con- 
servation of our National Character and our 
free institutions must go hand in hand with 
the development and conservation of our 
natural resources, which the Governors' 
Conference so well called the foundation of 
our prosperity. Whatever progress we may 
make as a nation, whatever wealth we may 
accumulate, however far we may push 
mechanical development and production, 
we shall never reach a point where our 
welfare can depend in the last analysis 
on anything but the fundamental qualities of 



NATURAL RESOURCES 105 

good citizenship — upon honesty, courage, 
and common sense. The homely virtues are 
the lasting virtues, and the road which leads 
to them is the road to genuine and lasting 
success. 

What this country needs is what every 
free country must set before it as the great 
goal toward which it works — an equal 
opportunity for life, liberty, and the pursuit 
of happiness for every one of its citizens, 
rich and poor, great and humble alike. To 
achieve this end we must put a stop to the 
improper political dominion of the great 
special interests. This country, its natural 
resources, its natural advantages, its op- 
portunities, and its institutions belong to 
all its citizens. They cannot be enjoyed 
fully and freely under any government in 
which the special interests as such have a 
voice. The supreme political task of our 
day, the indispensable condition of national 
eiEciency and national welfare, is to drive 
the special interests out of our public life. 



THE COMMISSION PRINCIPLE 

SPEECH AT SIOUX FALLS 

3 September, 1910 

It is more than thirty years ago that I first 
came into what was then the territory of 
Dakota, and twenty-seven years ago that I 
ran my cattle on the Little Missouri. The 
first occasion that I ever got into that part of 
the territory that is now the state of South 
Dakota was a couple of years later on, when 
about a dozen of us went down to the Indian 
roundup to hunt up cattle, and we came 
pretty near being run in by the Indian police. 
So that I came very close to making my first 
appearance in South Dakota under arrest. 

My friends, I never can sufficiently express 
the obligations I am under to the territory 
of Dakota, for it was here that I lived a num- 
ber of years in a ranch house in the cattle 
country, and I regard my experience during 
those years, when I lived and worked with 
my own fellow ranchmen on what was then 
the frontier, as the most important educa- 
tional asset of all my life. It is a mighty good 
thing to know men, not from looking at 

106 



THE COMMISSION PRINCIPLE 107 

them, but from having been one of them. 
When you have worked with them, when 
you have Hved with them, you do not have 
to wonder how they feel, because you feel it 
yourself. Every now and then, I am amused 
when newspapers in the East, — perhaps, I 
may say, not always friendly to me, — having 
prophesied that I was dead wrong on a cer- 
tain issue, and then finding out that I am 
right, express acid wonder how I am able to 
divine how people are thinking. Well, some- 
times I don't and sometimes I do; but when 
I do it comes simply from the fact that this 
is the way I am thinking myself. I know 
how the man that works with his hands and 
the man on the ranch are thinking, because 
I have been there and I am thinking that 
way myself. It is not that I divine the way 
they are thinking, but because I think the 
same way. 

Friends, I have come here to the West this 
time to visit the people I know so well and 
in whom I believe with all my heart, and to 
talk of certain things that interest none of 
us in a merely party sense, but do interest 
all of us as American citizens. Parties are 
good as instruments, and only as instruments. 
The thing that Americans should recollect 
is that what matters is not the opinions that 



io8 THE COMMISSION PRINCIPLE 

divide them one from another so much as it 
is the great fundamentals upon which they 
are united. We must have our differences; 
and it w^ould be a very unhealthy thing if all 
of us thought alike. We need the friction 
with people different from ourselves; and 
my experience with my fellow countrymen is 
that there will always be plenty of them who 
will think different ways. We need the in- 
tellectual differences that come from such 
friction, and we must resolutely, but with 
mutual respect and forbearance among our- 
selves, battle for our respective opinions. 
That is good and wholesome; but it is not 
merely good and wholesome, but vital, to re- 
member that on the really great issues we 
must all unite. Take what I mean when I 
speak of the "square deal." I mean not only 
that each man should act fairly and honestly 
under the rules of the game as it is now 
played, but I mean also that if the rules 
give improper advantage to some set of 
people, then let us change the rules of the 
game. Now, I make this discrimination 
between men. When a man cheats, if he 
swindles the public, if he corrupts a legis- 
lature, or if, as a member of the legislature, 
he tries to blackmail any one else, drive that 
man out of politics or business if you can; 



THE COMMISSION PRINCIPLE 109 

but when you find a man who is just like the 
rest of us, who tries to manage his business 
just about the same way as the rest of us 
manage ours; if you find that he has made a 
disproportionate fortune or has obtained other 
advantages which it is not healthy for the 
country that he should have, do not blame 
him — he has just done what the average 
citizen would have done in his place; do 
not blame him, but change the rules of the 
game. 

Now, that has direct reference to the matter 
of the tariff. Whenever men just like our- 
selves — possibly not much better, but prob- 
ably not in the least worse — continually 
fail to give us the results we have a right to 
expect from their efforts, we may just as 
well make up our minds that the fault lies, 
not in their personalities, but in the con- 
ditions under which they work; and profit 
comes, not from denouncing them, but from 
seeing that the conditions are changed. 
This is especially true of tariff making. It 
has been conclusively shown, by experiments 
repeated again and again, that the methods 
of tariff making by Congress, which have 
now obtained for so many years, cannot, 
from the very nature of the case, bring really 
satisfactory results. With the present tariff, 



no THE COMMISSION PRINCIPLE 

made by the same methods as its predecessor 
and as that predecessor's predecessor, there 
is grave dissatisfaction. The people know 
that there are some things in it which are 
not right, and therefore they tend to suspect 
the, as I think, more numerous things in it 
which are right. They know that the system 
on which it was made, the same system on 
which its predecessors were made, encourages 
a scramble of selfish interests, to which the 
all-important general interest of the public 
is necessarily more or less subordinated. 
There was a time when this scramble was 
regarded as the natural course in tariff 
making, and was not resented. The people 
demand, and rightly, that the profit of the 
special interests shall be subordinated to the 
general welfare in every case. It is this 
attitude — practically a new attitude — of 
the people which must be met in dealing 
with the present tariff, and with proposals 
to amend the present tariff. Very little im- 
provement, indeed, will follow any attempt 
to revise the tariff by methods hitherto used. 
The thing to do is to change the methods. 
I believe that this country is fully committed 
to the principle of protection; but it is to 
protection as a principle; to protection 
primarily in the interest of the standard of 



THE COMMISSION PRINCIPLE in 

living of the American workingman. I be- 
lieve that when protection becomes, not a 
principle, but a privilege and a preference — 
or, rather, a jumble of privileges and prefer- 
ences — then the American people disap- 
prove of it. Now, to correct the trouble, 
it is necessary, in the first place, to get in 
mind clearly what we want ; and, in the next 
place, to get in mind clearly the method by 
which we hope to obtain what we want. 
What we want is what I have already said 
— a square deal in the tariff as in every- 
thing else; a square deal for the wage earner; 
a square deal for the employer, and a square 
deal for the general public. To obtain it, 
we must have a thoroughly efficient and well- 
equipped tariff commission. 

The tariff ought to be a material issue, and 
not a moral issue; but if, instead of a square 
deal, we get a crooked deal, then it becomes 
very emphatically a moral issue. What we 
desire — when I say **we" I am speaking 
of the American people — in a tariff is such 
a measure of protection as will equalize the 
cost of production here and abroad; and 
as the cost of production is primarily labor 
cost, this means primarily a tariff sufficient 
to make up for the difference in labor cost 
here and abroad. The American public 



112 THE COMMISSION PRINCIPLE 

wants the American laboring man put on an 
equality with other citizens, so that he shall 
have the ability to achieve the American 
standard of living and the capacity to enjoy; 
and to do this, we must see that his wages 
are not lowered by improper competition 
with inferior wage workers abroad — with 
wage workers who are paid poorly and who 
live as no Americans are willing to live. 
But the American public does not wish to 
see the tariff so arranged as to benefit prima- 
rily a few wealthy men. 

As a means toward the attainment of the 
end in view, we have as yet devised nothing 
in any way so effective as a tariff commission. 
There should be a commission of well-paid 
experts; men who should not represent any 
special interest or industry; who should be 
masters of their subjects; men of the very 
highest character, who should approach the 
matter with absolute disregard of every out- 
side consideration. I do not want to see 
these men of one party or another or of one 
trade or another; but experts, single-minded 
in finding out, and telling, the truth. These 
men should take up in succession each 
subject with which the tariff deals and in- 
vestigate the conditions of production here 
and abroad; they should find out the facts 



THE COMMISSION PRINCIPLE 113 

and not merely accept the statements as to 
the facts of interested parties; and they 
should report to Congress on each subject 
as soon as the subject has been covered. 
Then, action can be taken at once on the 
particular schedule concerned, while the 
commission immediately proceeds to in- 
vestigate another. By these means log- 
rolling V70uld be avoided, and each subject 
treated on its merits, while there would be no 
such shock to general industry as is implied 
in the present custom of making sweeping 
changes in the whole tariff at once. Finally, 
it should be the duty of some governmental 
department or bureau to investigate the con- 
ditions in the various protected industries, 
and see that the laborers really are getting 
the benefit of the tariff supposed to be enacted 
in their interest. And if, from an investiga- 
tion of a certain industry, it appears that the 
tariff, supposed to be imposed for the benefit 
of the wage worker, results in such shape 
that the benefit does not reach him, the 
tariff on that industry should be taken off. 
Moreover, to secure good treatment abroad, 
we should keep the maximum and minimum 
provision. 

I would apply the same principle of com- 
mission in another matter, — the improvement 



114 THE COMMISSION PRINCIPLE 

of the rivers and harbors. At present, a river 
and harbor bill, like a tariff bill, tends to be 
settled by a squabble among a lot of big 
selfish interests and little selfish interests, 
with scant regard to the one really vital 
interest, that of the country as a v^hole. 
In this matter the national legislature 
would do well to profit by the example of 
Massachusetts. Until within a year Massa- 
chusetts dealt with its land and harbor 
legislation just as in Washington the Federal 
tariff and river and harbor laws have been 
dealt with; and there was just the same 
pulling and hauling, the same bargaining and 
logrolling, the same subordination of the 
general interest to various special interests. 
Last year the Governor took up the matter, 
and on his recommendation the legislature 
turned the whole business over to a commis- 
sion of experts; and all trouble and scandal 
forthwith disappeared. Incidentally, this 
seems to me to be a first-class instance of 
progressive legislation. 

And now, friends, the same principle that 
I believe should be applied in deahng with the 
tariff should be applied in the questions that 
come before us for settlement by legislation. 
I do not mean appointing a commission. 
I mean the principle of giving justice and 



THE COMMISSION PRINCIPLE 115 

demanding justice. Take corporations. A 
corporation that behaves well, that justifies 
itself by service to the public, should be well 
treated; and it is just as much our duty to 
hunt out of public life the corrupt public ser- 
vant who seeks to blackmail a corporation as 
it is to hunt out the man who improperly and 
corruptly serves a corporation. Now, let me 
give you an example in my own experience 
here in the old territory of Dakota in the cat- 
tle days. In those days there were no fences 
in the cow country, and we kept track of our 
herds by branding each calf with the brand 
of the cow that it followed. I do not have 
to explain that to you; but I do to an Eastern 
audience; and there must be plenty of you 
who know what mavericks are. By range law 
at that time, when we found a maverick, 
— an unclaimed, unbranded yearling, — we 
would put on the brand of the ranch on which 
it was found. Close to me was a man with the 
Thistle brand. I had hired a new puncher, 
and was out with him one day on the range, 
and we struck a maverick. He got out his 
rope, we threw the maverick, I made a little 
bit of fire of sagebrush, and took a cinch 
ring and heated it to run on the brand. It 
was on the range, and I said to the puncher, 
"Put on the Thistle brand." He said, "All 



ii6 THE COMMISSION PRINCIPLE 

right, Boss; I know my business." "Hold on 
a minute," I said; "you are putting on my 
brand." He said, "I always put on the 
Boss's brand." And then I said, "Oh! all 
right; go back and get your time." He said, 
"What's that for.?" And I said, "My 
friend, if you will steal for me, you will steal 
from me." And the same way with the 
public man. If he will steal for you, if he 
will act dishonestly on your behalf, he will 
steal from you and he will act dishonestly 
against you if he gets a chance. Do justice 
to the corporation. It is entitled to justice; 
but it is not entitled to own any man in public 
life. At this moment I think that the most 
important question of the various important 
questions before us is the divorce of big busi- 
ness from politics. 

Each man of great wealth is entitled abso- 
lutely to the protection of the law. He is 
entitled to it exactly as much as the small 
man; and you are not to be excused if you do 
not give him as much as the small man; but 
neither are you to be excused if you give him 
more. Do you see what I mean ? Remem- 
ber that justice means justice to both sides. 
If there was danger of an assault on the prop- 
erty or person of any very rich man, even 
though he were only one of a not inconsider- 



THE COMMISSION PRINCIPLE 117 

able number of very rich men with whom I 
happen to get on badly — if there was danger 
of an assault on him in person or property, I 
would count myself a worthless American citi- 
zen if I did not come myself to his protection, 
and I would think the same of you. But after 
protecting him I would then do my level best, 
in company with the rest of my fellow citi- 
zens, to see that he did not have a chance to 
do anything crooked on his side. In other 
words, I believe that we should try to do entire 
justice to such a man and exact entire justice 
from him. Do not ever for one moment 
fix your eyes only on one particular kind of 
wrongdoing, or on one particular class of 
your fellow citizens as being wrongdoers. 
I know men, you know men, who will loudly 
inveigh against the corruption of the rich 
man; but you cannot get them — especially 
if they are politicians — just before election 
time to say anything against the violence of 
the mob for fear that they will hurt the 
feelings of the labor vote. I remember on 
one occasion being introduced as the poor 
man's friend. I said, "Now, let us amend 
that. I am the poor man's friend if the poor 
man is straight, and I am the rich man's friend 
if the rich man is straight; but if a man is 
crooked, I am against him, rich or poor." 



ii8 THE COMMISSION PRINCIPLE 

If a body of labor men commit a deed of vio- 
lence, — turn themselves into a mob, — the 
first duty of decent citizens is to put down 
the violence and disperse the mob. You 
have got to have order and the supremacy 
of the law, or you cannot have civilization. 
If a rich man acts corruptly and dishonestly, 
if he arrogates privileges to himself, and dis- 
regards the rights of others, then it is our 
prime duty to punish that rich man and to 
make the conditions such that he cannot 
again repeat his offense. 

Lawless violence and the corruption that 
eats into the vitals of honest government 
are equally dangerous to the welfare of the 
people. Under other forms of government 
there may be an appearance of success and 
an appearance of prosperity, even when the 
average citizen is not straight. It cannot 
be so with us. We here, we of this great 
democracy, we who are engaged in the 
greatest and most hopeful, and yet the most 
difficult, governmental experiment that has 
ever been tried — the experiment of securing 
self-government for a people on a continental 
scale — we cannot afford not to have the 
highest quality of individual citizenship. 
The stream will not rise higher than its 
source. If the average man is not a decent, 



THE COMMISSION PRINCIPLE 119 

straight man, knowing his rights and insist- 
ing upon them, and knowing his duties and 
performing them, we cannot have good gov- 
ernment. Frown upon the corrupt man, 
frown upon the man who violates the law; 
and remember this, that if he steals in small 
things he will steal in big things if he gets 
the chance. 

Send to represent you in public life men 
who are literally incorruptible, men who will 
not only not do what is wrong if tempted 
with money, but who will not do what is 
wrong even if tempted by popular applause. 
You have the right to have your representa- 
tives represent you; but, mind you, always 
remember that if you ask them to do what is 
wrong, you ask them to misrepresent all that 
is best in you. 

Demand the highest ideals in your repre- 
sentatives, and shape your political action 
with two things in view. 

In the first place, try to get by legislation, 
national and state, a better chance for the 
average man, a greater equality of oppor- 
tunity for that man. This country is founded 
on the theory that it is a great deal better that 
the average man should have a good living 
than that the exceptional man should have 
a great profit. Shape your laws so that the 



I20 THE COMMISSION PRINCIPLE 

man shall have a great profit only if he ren- 
ders a great service to his fellov^s. We must 
have exceptional men, and we must give them 
exceptional rewards; but the rewards should 
bear some kind of proportion to the services 
rendered. I do not think that the American 
public grudges an exceptional reward to an 
exceptional man if it is commensurate with 
what he has done, but it does grudge it when 
he gets an exceptional reward for what is in 
its essence swindling, or when although he has 
rendered a service the reward is out of pro- 
portion to the service rendered. 

It is a bad thing for our community i£ any 
considerable class of people lead their lives 
under conditions so hard that they cannot be 
good citizens. It is almost equally damaging 
to a man not to have enough work and to have 
so much that he is crushed under it. Our 
steady effort should be, so far as possible, 
to so shape the work of our lawmaking bodies 
as to help the average man and the average 
woman do their work under the most favor- 
able conditions. Now that is the first thing 
we should do — do what we can by legisla- 
tion and an honest administration of the laws 
to equahze conditions, to make opportunity 
really fairly equal for all men, and do away 
with conditions that tend to break down and 



THE COMMISSION PRINCIPLE 121 

depress any given set of workers. That is 
the first part. 

Now, the second part is this: After every- 
thing has been done that can be done by 
legislation, remember that the fundamental 
factor in any man's success in life must be 
that man's own character. The wisest laws 
and the best government will not help a man 
who will not work, or who cannot work well 
and wisely. Every man of us stumbles at 
times; there is not one of us here who does 
not sometimes stumble, and who, therefore, 
ought not to have a helping hand stretched out 
to him. Shame upon us if we fail to stretch 
out a helping hand to the man who stumbles; 
but if he lies down, you cannot carry him. 
You can help him most by helping him to 
help himself. ^ 

Another thing. Let each man remember 
his rights, and also let him remember the 
rights of others; and especially let the man 
who is conscious of his wrongs see that he 
does not put any of them on the shoulders of 
the woman who happens to be his wife. I 
have met more than one agitator, whom you 
could always see in the crossroads store, 
inveighing against the inequality of the social 
system that kept him down, and all the while 
he lived at all only because his wife took in 



122 THE COMMISSION PRINCIPLE 

washing, or did something of that kind. 
Distrust also the man who would like to 
reform the whole world, but who cannot keep 
his family decently clothed and fed. The 
first duty of every man and woman is their 
duty in the family — to those nearest to them. 
If a man is not a good father, a good husband, 
he is a poor citizen. That is not enough; 
but he has got to be that or he is a poor citi- 
zen. Then, further. If he is not a good 
neighbor, if he is not a man you are willing 
to deal with, to work alongside of, he is not 
going to be of much good to the state at large. 
If there is one day when it is our duty to 
serve the state, there are a hundred days 
when it is our duty to serve our families; 
but we ought all of us to be ready to serve 
the state when the day comes. Woe unto 
the nation which is unable to endure in such 
a season; woe unto the nation whose sons 
shrink from making a sacrifice that only 
heroic natures can make. Take an example 
from the men of the Civil War. I was proud 
to-day to have the National Guard here and 
see them march by. I have been a guards- 
man myself. I wished to see them because 
I like to see our men keep alive the spirit 
which enabled the men of the dark years of 
'6i--'65 to do their duty. And I want you 



THE COMMISSION PRINCIPLE 123 

to remember the lesson that they taught us. 

You may notice, friends, that I have not been 

promising you the millennium if you vote my 

way. I have not been telling you, and shall 

not tell you, that if you do your duty you will 

have a life of ease and pleasure. I do not 

think we shall have the millennium, but I 

think we are not to be excused if we do not 

try measurably to improve our condition. I 

am not advising you to act so as to make 

life more easy for you; I am not advising 

you to act in a spirit that shall disregard 

what is difficult; I am not advising you to 

get around obstacles; but I am advising 

you so that you can overcome them. I think 

all of you here know the unwise man, — I 

am sorry to say, as often the unwise woman, — 

who, because he or she has had a hard time 

in life, fooHshly refuses to teach the children 

how best to meet the difficulties in life. It 

often happens that such a woman wishes her 

daughter "brought up like a lady," meaning 

thereby that the daughter shall be brought 

up a perfectly useless individual; and I 

think we all know rich men who leave to 

their sons riches which are millstones around 

their necks because they have brought them 

up to do nothing useful and to lead that most 

hopeless and dismal of all possible lives — a 



124 THE COMMISSION PRINCIPLE 

life devoted to pleasure as a business. It is 
not only the poorest business, but the funny 
thing is, they do not get any pleasure out 
of it. 

Bring your children up not so that they will 
shirk difficulties, but so that they will over- 
come them ; not so that they will try to have 
a soft time of selfish ease, but so that they 
will have the greatest joy that comes to man- 
kind — the satisfaction of knowing, whenever 
the end may come, that they have led worthy 
lives. 



LABOR AND CAPITAL 

SPEECH AT FARGO 

5 September, 1910 

To-day — on Labor Day — I speak in one 
sense to those especially personally and 
vitally interested in the labor struggle; and 
yet I speak of this primarily as one aspect of 
the larger social struggle growing out of the 
attempts to readjust social conditions and 
make them more equitable. 

The nineteenth century was distinctly one 
of economic triumphs — triumphs in the 
domain of production, including transporta- 
tion and the mechanics of exchange. The 
marvelous progress made during that hun- 
dred years in these respects multiplied man's 
productive power to an almost inconceivable 
degree. In the matter of the production of 
wealth, as much progress was made during 
the nineteenth century as during all previous 
periods since history dawned. I am not 
speaking hyperbolically; I mean that liter- 
ally. When this nation was founded, steam 
and electricity were unknown. Our whole 
modern industrial system had not yet come 

125 



126 LABOR AND CAPITAL 

into being ; and the means of transportation 
for men and goods were the same as those 
that were in existence in the time of Trajan's 
empire and the days of Egypt and Nineveh; 
that is, the changes brought on in a single 
century through machinery and steam have 
been greater than the sum total of the changes 
of the preceding thousands of years; and 
these very changes and this material progress 
have thrust upon us social and political 
problems of the first magnitude. The 
triumphs of the physical sciences in the nine- 
teenth century represented progress pri- 
marily in the material elements of civilization. 
That was their problem; but the most press- 
ing problems that confront the present 
century are not concerned with the material 
production of wealth, but with its distribution. 
The demands of progress now deal not so 
much with the material as with the moral 
and ethical factors of civilization. Our 
basic problem in the twentieth century is to 
see that the marvelously augmented powers 
of production bequeathed to us by the nine- 
teenth century be made to administer to the 
needs of the many rather than be exploited 
for the profit of the few. 

The American wage earner faces this larger 
social problem in a dual capacity : first, as 



LABOR AND CAPITAL 127 

a citizen of the republic charged with the 
full duty of citizenship; and, next, as a 
wage earner — as a wage worker — who, 
together with his fellow workers, is vitally 
concerned in the question of wages and 
general conditions of employment, which 
affect not only his well-being and that of his 
wife and children, but the opportunities of 
all workers for a higher development. 

It is true of wage workers, as of all other 
citizens, that most of their progress must 
depend upon their own initiative and their 
own efforts. Nevertheless, there are three 
different factors in this progress. There is, 
first, the share which the man's own in- 
dividual qualities must determine. This is 
the most important of all, for nothing can 
supply the place of individual capacity. Yet 
there are two other factors of prime impor- 
tance, namely : what can be done by the 
wage workers in cooperation with one an- 
other, usually through unions; and what 
can be done by government — that is, by 
the instrument through which all the people 
work collectively. Wages and other most 
important conditions of employment must 
remain largely outside of government con- 
trol; must be left for adjustment by free 
contract between employers and wage earners, 



128 LABOR AND CAPITAL 

subject — and I call your attention to the 
proviso — to legislation which will prevent 
conditions which compel men or women to 
accept wages representing less than will insure 
decent living. But to attempt to leave 
the question of contract between employer 
and employee merely to individual action 
means the absolute destruction of individ- 
ualism ; for where the individual is so weak 
that he, perforce, has to accept whatever 
a strongly organized body chooses to give 
him, his individual liberty becomes a mere 
sham and mockery. It is indispensably 
necessary, in order to preserve to the largest 
degree our system of individualism, that there 
should be effective and organized collective 
action. The wage earners must act jointly, 
through the process of collective bargaining, 
in great industrial enterprises. Only thus 
can they be put upon a plane of economic 
equality with their corporate employers. 
Only thus is freedom of contract made a real 
thing and not a mere legal fiction. There 
are occasional occupations where this is not 
necessary; but, speaking broadly, it is 
necessary throughout the great w^orld of 
organized industry. I believe this practice of 
collective bargaining, effective only through 
such organizations as the trades unions, to 



LABOR AND CAPITAL 129 

have been one of the most potent forces 
in the past century in promoting the prog- 
ress of the wage earners and in securing 
larger social progress for humanity. Wher- 
ever there is organized capital on a consider- 
able scale I believe in the principle of or- 
ganized labor and in the practice of collective 
bargaining, not merely as a desirable thing 
for the wage earners, but as something 
which has been demonstrated to be essential 
in the long run to their permanent progress. 
Where capital is organized, as it must be 
organized under modern industrial conditions, 
the only way to secure proper freedom — 
proper treatment — for the individual laborer 
is to have labor organize also. 

This does not mean that I unequivocally 
indorse any or all practices that labor or- 
ganizations may happen to adopt, or any or 
all principles that they may choose to enun- 
ciate. Labor organizations have the weak- 
nesses and defects common to all forms of 
human organizations. When any man tells 
you that the laboring man never goes wrong, 
make up your minds that he is telling you 
what he knows to be an untruth, and dis- 
trust him accordingly; for it is a good old 
principle to act upon in the long run, that the 
most uncomfortable truth is a safer traveling 

K 



I30 LABOR AND CAPITAL 

companion than the pleasantest falsehood. 
Sometimes labor organizations act very well, 
and sometimes, like the rest of mankind, they 
act very badly; and I am for them when 
they act well, and I am against them when 
they act badly. I believe that their existence 
is a necessity; I believe that their aims and 
purposes are generally good; and I believe 
that all of them have occasionally made 
mistakes, and that some of them have been 
guilty of wrongdoing. Just in so far as they 
are strong and effective they tempt designing 
men who seek to control them for their own 
interests, and stimulate the desires of am- 
bitious leaders who may be clever, crooked 
men, or who may be honest but visionary 
and foolish. In other words, in treating of 
labor unions, as in treating of corporations, 
or of humanity generally, we shall do well to 
remember Abraham Lincoln's saying that 
"there is a deal of human nature in man- 
kind." Whether in a man or in an organized 
body of men, the power to do good means 
that such power may be twisted into evil; 
and in proportion as the power grows so it 
becomes steadily more important that it 
should be handled aright. Just in propor- 
tion as in its proper function power is im- 
portant to social progress, so in its improper 



LABOR AND CAPITAL 131 

function it becomes fraught with social dis- 
aster. 

Outside critics should appreciate the neces- 
sity of organized labor, and understand and 
sympathize with what is good in it instead 
of condemning it indiscriminately. On the 
other hand, those within its ranks should 
fearlessly analyze the criticisms directed 
against it, and ruthlessly eliminate from the 
practices of its organization those things 
which justify such criticism and attack. In 
other words, let the outsider realize the good 
— the necessity — of organized labor, and 
let the men within the organization realize the 
necessity of keeping the organization straight. 
This is the path, not only of right, but of 
wisdom and safety. Public opinion in the 
United States is daily becoming more alert 
and more intelligent and more forceful; and 
no organization, whether trades union or 
corporation, whether industrial or nonindus- 
trial, can endure or permanently amount 
to a social force if it does not harmonize 
with a wise and enlightened public opinion. 
Hitherto we Americans have been over- 
occupied with material things, and have 
neglected to watch the play of the social 
forces about us. But now we are awakening 
from that indifference; and every form of 



132 LABOR AND CAPITAL 

organization representing an important eco- 
nomic, political, or social force must undergo 
a closer scrutiny than ever before. 

I think that the next quarter of a century- 
will be important politically in many ways 
(I do not use the word "politically" in the 
way of party politics; but I am speaking of 
the social development of our people); and 
in none more so than in the labor movement. 
Not only are the benefits of labor organiza- 
tions more clearly understood than before, 
but any shortcoming or vice displayed in 
connection therewith is also more clearly 
understood and more quickly resented. Just 
as it is with corporations, just so it is with 
railroads. Forty years ago the railroads 
could do with absolute impunity, and with- 
out any criticism, things which would cause 
well nigh a revolution if they attempted 
them now. The public is growling more 
and more to understand that, in a contest 
between employer and employee — a cor- 
poration and a trades union — not only the 
interests of the contestants, but the interests 
of the third party — the public — must be 
considered. Anything like levity in provok- 
ing a strike, on the one hand or on the 
other, is certain more and more to be resented 
by the public. Strikes are sometimes nee- 



LABOR AND CAPITAL 133 

essary and proper; sometimes they repre- 
sent the only way in which, after all other 
methods have been exhausted, it is possible 
for the laboring man to stand up for his 
rights; but it must be clearly understood 
that a strike is a matter of last resort, and, of 
course, violence, lawlessness, and mob rule 
must be promptly and sternly dealt with, no 
matter what the cause may be that excites 
them. Our social organization is too com- 
plex for us to fail quickly to condemn those 
who, with levity or in a spirit of wanton 
brutality, bring about far-reaching and dis- 
astrous interference with normal processes. 
More and more we are growing to understand 
that corruption and lawless disorder are twin 
foes of the body politic, and that neither can 
be tolerated. All that I can do to help in 
bettering social conditions, to help in making 
things better for the man who has had a hard 
time in Hfe, will be done; but when he 
resorts to lawless violence, when there comes 
a question of mob rule, all questions of re- 
form must be left in abeyance until the 
laws are absolutely obeyed. The pubHc 
sympathizes cordially with any movement for 
a good standard of living and for moderate 
hours of employment. (I personally, for 
instance, cordially beheve in eight hours a 



134 LABOR AND CAPITAL 

day, and in one day in seven for complete 
rest.) Where men and women are worked 
under harsh and intolerable conditions, and 
can secure no relief without a strike, or, in- 
deed, where the strike is clearly undertaken 
for things which are vitally necessary — and 
then only as a last resort in the effort to 
achieve the end in any other ways — public 
sympathy will favor the wage workers; but 
it will not favor them unless such conditions as 
these are fulfilled, and it will condemn them 
if they resort to lawless violence. There- 
fore, it is becoming more and more important 
that the labor movement should combine 
steady, far-seeing leadership with discipline 
and control in its ranks; and I am glad that 
this afternoon I can say, when I speak of 
the proper type of leadership, you have an 
instance in the gentleman who has spoken 
to us this afternoon on behalf of labor. 
Dishonest leadership is a curse anywhere, 
but nowhere is it a greater curse than in 
the labor movement. If there is one lesson 
which I would rather teach my fellow Ameri- 
cans than any other, it is to hound down 
the dishonest man — no matter what his 
condition — and to brush aside with impa- 
tient contempt the creature who denounces 
dishonesty only when it is found in some 



LABOR AND CAPITAL 135 

special social stratum. Hunt down the dis- 
honest man without regard to class; and if 
he belongs to your class, hunt him down a 
little quicker. Take a case in politics. When 
I was President I sought so to carry myself 
that there should not be any need of saying, 
"Put the other party in to turn the rascals 
out," because I would turn them out myself. 
I will cinch the dishonest man of the other 
party; and if he is a member of my own 
party I will cinch him just a little bit quicker. 
Let the labor leader, the politician who needs 
the votes of the labor leaders, remember 
that it is their duty to hunt down the dis- 
honest man in the labor movement; and let 
the man of means, the business man, the 
editor of the big paper that is financed by 
business men, remember that it is their duty 
to hunt down the dishonest man of great 
wealth, 

I cannot help saying just a word more 
about the delight it gave me this afternoon 
to hear the utterances of a Federal judge 
who looks ahead, a Federal judge who not 
only stands for honesty and righteousness 
in the conventional forms in which we have 
been accustomed to see them for generations, 
but who understands changed conditions and 
realizes that the Constitution of the United 



136 LABOR AND CAPITAL 

States must be administered, if it is to be 
administered wisely, by men who sympathize 
with, and understand, the needs of the wage 
worker, just as they sympathize with, and 
understand, the needs of all other American 
citizens. 

For many years I have been more or less 
closely associated with representative leaders 
of labor, organized and unorganized. Some 
of these men are among my close friends, 
whom I respect and admire as heartily as I 
do any men in America. There are some 
of them to whom I go as freely for assistance 
and guidance, for aid and help, in making 
up my mind how to deal with our social 
problems, as I go to the leaders of any busi- 
ness or profession. I cannot pay too high a 
tribute to the worth and energy of these 
men — to their sincerity and good judgment 
as leaders. But no movement — no leader- 
ship — however honest, can endure unless 
the rank and file live up to their duties, and 
search for such leadership and support it 
when they find it. If the best men in a 
labor union leave its management and con- 
trol to men of a poorer type, the effect will 
be just as disastrous as when good citizens 
in a city follow the same course as regards 
city government. The stay-at-home man in 



LABOR AND CAPITAL 137 

a union is just as much responsible for the 
sins of omission and commission of his 
organization as the stay-at-home man in a 
city is for the civic conditions under which he 
suffers and about which he complains. 

All that properly can be done should be 
done by all of us to help upward the standard 
of living and improve the ability of the 
average man to reach that standard. There 
are still in the United States great masses of 
skilled and unorganized labor whose condi- 
tions of work and living are harsh and pit- 
iable. It is a shocking indictment of our 
industrial condition to be told in a matter- 
of-course way in a government report that 
thousands of workers in this country are 
compelled to toil every day in the week, 
without one day of rest, for a wage of J 45 a 
month. Such a condition is bad for them, 
and, in the end, bad for all of us. Our com- 
mercial development should heartily be en- 
couraged; but it must not be allowed to 
commercialize our minds. That is not only 
the affair of the wage workers; it is the 
affair of all of us. If one set of our fellow 
citizens is degraded, you can be absolutely 
certain that the degradation will spread more 
or less to all of us. This government is 
founded on the theory that "all men up" is 



138 LABOR AND CAPITAL 

a safer motto than "some men down." We 
must make it good. 

It is not merely the duty of the wage 
earner, but it is also the duty of the general 
pubHc, to see that he has safe and healthy 
conditions under which to carry on his work. 
No worker should be compelled, as a condi- 
tion of earning his daily bread, to risk his 
Hfe and Hmb, or be deprived of his health, 
or have to work under dangerous and bad 
surroundings. Society owes the worker this 
because it owes as much to itself. He should 
not be compelled to make this matter of 
contract; he ought not to be left to fight 
alone for decent conditions in this respect. 
His protection in the place where he works 
should be guaranteed by the laws of the land. 
In other words, he should be protected 
during his working hours against greed and 
carelessness on the part of unscrupulous 
employers, just as outside of those working 
hours both he and his employer are protected 
in their lives and property against the mur- 
derer and the thief. 

This opens a vitally important field of 
legislation to the national government and 
to the state alike. As Judge Amidon has 
said, it is humihating to think how far we 
of this country are behind most of the other 



LABOR AND CAPITAL 139 

countries in such matters. Practically all 
civilized countries have for more than a 
decade prohibited by the strictest regulations 
the poisonous match industry; yet v^e had 
not done anything at all until very recently 
to protect the laborers against this horrible 
danger. The national government made 
an investigation a year ago into this industry, 
which showed a condition of things unspeak- 
ably shocking and revolting. Legislation to 
prevent these abuses was introduced in Con- 
gress, which was not passed. Since then 
the companies in fault have ostentatiously 
announced that they have done away with 
the objectionable conditions. I hope so; 
but whether they have or not, a law should 
be passed in stringent form to prevent any 
possible backsliding. 

So it is in the matter of injuries to em- 
ployees. In what is called "employers' 
liability" legislation, other countries have 
accepted the principle that the industry must 
bear the monetary burden of its human 
sacrifices, and that the employee who is 
injured shall have a fixed and definite sum. 
The United States still proceeds on an out- 
worn and curiously improper principle, in 
accordance with which it has too often been 
held by the courts that the frightful burden 



I40 LABOR AND CAPITAL 

of the accident shall be borne in its entirety 
by the very person least able to bear it. 
Fortunately, in a number of states — in Wis- 
consin and New York, for instance — these 
defects in our life are either being remedied, 
or else are being made a subject of intelligent 
study with a view to their remedy. In New 
York a bill embodying moderate compensa- 
tion for accidents has already been passed. 
Other states will undoubtedly follow in the 
same path. The Federal Government has, 
so far as its own employees are concerned, 
been the first to recognize and put into shape 
this principle. However, this pioneer law 
was not made comprehensive enough; it 
does not cover all the employees of the Federal 
Government that ought to come within its 
provisions, and the amount paid for per- 
manent disability or death is entirely inade- 
quate. Nevertheless, it was a great step in 
advance to have this principle of working- 
men's compensation accepted and embodied 
in the Federal statutes ; and the recent action 
of Congress in providing for a commission to 
study and report upon the subject gives 
promise that the same principle will soon be 
applied to private firms that come within the 
jurisdiction of the Federal Government. 
Women and children should, beyond all 



LAEOR AND CAPITAL 141 

question, be protected; and in their cases 
there can be no question that the govern- 
ment should act. They should be particular 
objects of our solicitude; and they should 
be guarded in effective fashion against the de- 
mands of a too greedy commercialism. On 
my recent trip in the neighborhood of Scran- 
ton and Wilkes-Barre, every one I spoke to 
agreed as to the immense improvement that 
had been wrought by the effective enforce- 
ment of the laws prohibiting children under 
the age of fourteen from working, and pro- 
hibiting women from working more than ten 
hours a day. Personally, I think ten hours 
a day too long; but, be this as it may, ten 
hours a day was a great advance. 

Among the planks in the platform of the 
American Federation of Labor, there are 
some to which I very strongly subscribe. 
They are : — 

1. Free schools; free textbooks; and 
compulsory education. 

2. A workday of not more than eight 
hours. 

3. Release from employment one day in 
seven. 

4. The abolition of the sweatshop system. 

5. Sanitary inspection of factory, work- 
shop, mine, and home. 



142 LABOR AND CAPITAL 

6. Liability of employers for injury to body 
or loss of life. 

(I regard the demand in this form as in- 
adequate. What we need is an automatically 
fixed compensation for all injuries received 
by the employee in the course of his duty, 
this being infinitely better for the employee 
and more just to the employer. The only 
sufferers will be lawyers of that undesirable 
class which exist chiefly by carrying on law- 
suits of this nature.) 

7. The passage and enforcement of rigid 
anti-child-labor laws which will cover every 
portion of this country. 

(Similar laws limiting women's labor should 
be enacted.) 

8. Suitable and plentiful playgrounds for 
children in all the cities. 

Inasmuch as prevention is always best, 
especial attention should be paid to the 
prevention of industrial accidents by passing 
laws requiring the use of safety devices. At 
present the loss of life and limb among the 
industrial workers of the United States is 
simply appalling, and every year equals in 
magnitude the killed and wounded in a fair- 
sized war. Most of these casualties are pre- 
ventable; and our legislative policy should 
be shaped accordingly. It would be a good 



LABOR AND CAPITAL 143 

idea to establish in each city a museum of 
safety devices, from which the workingmen 
could get drawings of them and information 
as to how they could be obtained and used. 

The matter of compensation for injuries 
to employees is, perhaps, more immediately 
vital than any other. The report of the com- 
mission which has begun to look into this 
matter on behalf of the New York Legisla- 
ture is well worth reading. The bill presented 
by the Federation of Labor at Wisconsin on 
this subject seems excellent. In all danger- 
ous trades the employer should be forced to 
bear the burden of the accident, so that the 
shock may not be borne by the community 
as a whole. This would be a measure of 
justice in itself, and would do away with a 
fruitful source of antagonism between em- 
ployer and employed. 

Our ideal should be a rate of wages suffi- 
ciently high to enable workmen to live in a 
manner conformable to American ideals 
and standards, to educate their children, 
and to provide for sickness and old age; the 
abolition of child labor; safety device legis- 
lation to prevent industrial accidents; and 
automatic compensation for losses caused by 
these industrial accidents. 



WORLD FEATS 

SPEECH AT OMAHA 
7. September, 1910 

I AM glad to be with you to-day; and I 
enjoyed the modest tribute to your worth 
made by the Senator, and I agree with every 
word of it. I am particularly pleased to be 
introduced by the Senator, because he was 
one of the men upon whom I especially 
relied while I was President, both while he 
was in the House and afterwards when he 
was in the Senate. On one occasion he paid 
a tribute to me, which may have been 
entirely unmerited, in which he described 
what the typical American public servant 
must be. In my own case all I can say is 
that I endeavored to live up to that descrip- 
tion, and that I was able to accomplish what 
I did accomplish in Washington only because 
of the way I was backed up by men like 
Senator Burkett; and, as we have here to- 
day a guest from Iowa, let me say also, like 
Senator Dolliver. 

My friends, I come here — back to the 

144 



WORLD FEATS 145 

West, back to my own people whom I know 
so well and in whom I believe so deeply 
because they are such typical Americans. I 
have returned from a trip abroad, and I think 
that any one who goes out of this country 
ought to realize that party lines stop at 
the water's edge; that infinitely more im- 
portant than the questions that divide us 
one from another within our limits are the 
great fundamental questions upon which we 
stand alike without regard to party differ- 
ences simply as Americans; and that the great 
feats of which America is proud and the 
great things which she has done are to be 
credited to all good Americans. 

In traveling in Europe last spring, one 
thing which especially struck me was the fact 
that the two feats which made the deepest 
impression abroad were the cruise of the 
battle fleet around the world and the digging 
of the Panama Canal. Wherever I went, 
wherever I met the great statesmen of foreign 
nations, I found out that these two feats, 
among all the feats credited to the American 
people during the last two decades, had most 
deeply and favorably affected foreign judg- 
ment of our people. 

Remember, friends, that foreign judgment 
of us depends not in the least upon what 



146 WORLD FEATS 

we say we can do, but upon what we can do. 
I hate to see an American boast in the pres- 
ence of a foreigner; it exposes him and his 
country to laughter. It does no good to boast 
that we are the greatest nation on the face of 
the earth; but it does help us when we do a 
great deed that no other nation has done. 

During the past fifteen years we have 
built up our Navy, and the building up of 
that Navy has been the most potent means of 
making the United States respected abroad. 
Some time after we began to build it up the 
great military nations abroad sneered and 
said, "Yes; the Yankees can build ships; 
but they don't know how to handle them; 
they cannot do anything with them when 
they have been built." No nation had ever 
ventured on the experience of sending a great 
battle fleet around the world. Other nations 
have tried it with small squadrons halfway 
around the world, and they had plenty of 
difficulties and plenty of failures even with 
such a small task; but Uncle Sam once for 
all put an end to this talk about his fleet when 
he had that fleet undertake a cruise that is to 
the credit of no other nation under the sun. 

Now, there is no use of a nation claiming 
to be a great nation unless it is prepared to 
play a great part. A nation such as ours 



WORLD FEATS 147 

cannot possibly play a great part in inter- 
national affairs, cannot expect to be treated 
as a weight in either the Atlantic or the Paci- 
fic, or to have its voice as to the Monroe 
Doctrine, or the management of the Panama 
Canal, heeded, unless it has a strong and 
thoroughly efficient Navy. Within the last 
decade the American Navy has been about 
trebled in strength and much more than 
trebled in efficiency, due to its extraordinary 
progress in markmanship and maneuvering. 
And, friends, that Navy is not an affair of 
the seacoast only. There is not a man who 
lives in the grass country, in the cattle coun- 
try, or among the Great Lakes, or alongside 
the Missouri who is not just as keenly inter- 
ested in that Navy as if he dwelt on the New 
England coast, or the Gulf coast, or on Puget 
Sound. The Navy belongs to all of us. 
If it wins credit for the nation, it wins for 
all of us. Now, my friends, more than once 
in my experience in public life I have found 
that I got better support from the men in 
the interior than from the men of the coast 
when I appealed to them for the upbuilding 
of the Navy. Take this very instance of 
sending the battle fleet around the world. As 
you gentlemen in the Senate and the House 
remember, there was a great panic along the 



148 WORLD FEATS 

Atlantic coast when I announced that the 
fleet was going around the world. It is not a 
good thing for any one proud of this country 
to think he has the sole proprietary interest 
in the fleet or the army or anything else. I 
wanted to have it understood by ourselves and 
by foreign powers, not as a menace, but as 
the strongest kind of provocation to friendli- 
ness. That fleet was just as much at home 
in the Pacific as it was in the Atlantic, and it 
could go anywhere and would go anywhere 
when it was necessary. When I announced 
that it was going around the world, some 
good people on the Atlantic slope became very 
much concerned, and some who were a little 
less good threatened a great outcry, and it 
was announced that the fleet would not sail. 
It did sail. Some of my friends of the co- 
ordinate branch of the government, as dis- 
tinguished from the type of friend I have with 
me to-day, announced that it should not sail 
because I should not have the money to let 
it sail; that it should stay where it was, — to 
which the answer was easy. I said I had the 
money to send it to the Pacific, and I intended 
to send it there, and then, if they did not 
want to appropriate the money to get it back, 
it was their affair. After this announcement 
the discussion subsided, except for the con- 



WORLD FEATS 149 

ventional and perfunctory remarks that I 
had been guilty of usurpation of authority. 
Now, so far from this growth of our Navy 
representing on our part either a menace of 
aggression to weaker nations or a menace 
of war to stronger nations, it has told most 
powerfully for peace. Everywhere in Europe 
the cruise of the battle fleet around the world 
was accepted not only as an extraordinary 
feat, reflecting the highest honor upon our 
Navy, but as one of the movements which 
tended markedly to promote peaceful stability 
in international relations. No nation re- 
garded the cruise as fraught with any menace 
of hostility to itself; and yet every nation 
accepted it as proof that we were not only 
desirous ourselves to keep the peace, but able 
to prevent the peace being broken at our 
expense. No cruise in any way approaching 
it has ever been made by any fleet of any 
other power; and the best naval opinion 
abroad had been that no such feat was pos- 
sible; that is, that no such cruise as that 
we actually made could be undertaken by a 
fleet of such size without innumerable break- 
downs and accidents. The best naval people 
on the other side sneered when I said " The 
fleet will start;" and they said that the battle- 
ships and torpedo boats would be strewed 



150 WORLD FEATS 

around every part of the globe making 
repairs. As a matter of fact, the fleet was 
never, in the whole year and a quarter of its 
absence in its circumnavigation of the globe, 
excepting once when there was a typhoon, 
five minutes late in keeping the schedule time 
every day, and never did a single vessel fail 
to put in its appearance at the appointed 
time of visit. The success of the cruise, per- 
formed as it was without a single accident, 
immeasurably raised the prestige, not only of 
our fleet, but of our nation; and was a dis- 
tinct help to the cause of international peace. 
As regards the Panama Canal, I really 
think that outside nations have a juster idea 
than our own people of the magnitude and 
success of the work. I wish our people 
realized what is being done on the Isthmus. 
If a man of intelligence who had never left 
the country asked me whether I would advise 
him to make a short trip to Europe or a trip 
to the Panama Canal, I would without hesi- 
tation advise him to go to the Panama Canal. 
He would there see in operation the com- 
pleting of one of the great achievements of 
modern times. Colonel Goethals, and the 
men working under him, are rendering a 
service to this country which can only be 
paralleled in our past history by some of 



WORLD FEATS 151 

the services rendered in certain wars. No 
feat of the kind or of anything Hke the mag- 
nitude has ever been successfully carried out, 
and hardly ever been attempted. No other 
nation has to its credit a task of such m.agni- 
tude, of such importance, as we will have three 
years hence when that canal is completed. 

Six years ago last spring the American 
government took possession of the Isthmus. 
The first two years were devoted to the sani- 
tation of the Isthmus, to assembling the plant 
and working force, and providing quarters, 
food, and water supplies. In all these points 
the success was extraordinary. From one of 
the plague spots of the globe, one of the most 
unhealthy regions in the entire world, the 
Isthmus has been turned into a singularly 
healthy place of abode, where the death rate 
is small, and where hundreds of children are 
now being raised under as favorable condi- 
tions as in most parts of the United States. 
The quarters, food, and water supply are 
excellent, and the plant the best ever gathered 
for such a purpose. Active excavation on a 
large scale did not begin until January, 1907. 
Three and a half years have gone by since 
then, and three fifths of the total excavation 
has already been accomplished. I had no 
idea that such a rate of progress was possible. 



152 WORLD FEATS 

Our people are really not awake to the fact 
that such a rate has obtained. The amount 
taken out has passed anything which previous 
experience warranted us in believing to be 
possible. In 1908 and 1909 the monthly 
average of rock and earth removed was three 
million yards, notwithstanding the fact that 
nine months of each year constituted a season 
of very heavy rainfall. There remains to be 
excavated only about sixty million cubic 
yards. If we could keep up the past average 
of excavation, this should be done in twenty 
months; but it is impossible to maintain such 
a ratio as the depth increases, for the output 
necessarily diminishes as the field of opera- 
tion narrows. Still, it is certain that such a 
rate can be maintained as will enable the 
workers to finish the excavation considerably 
in advance of the date fixed for the opening 
of the canal, January i, 1915. When I an- 
nounced on the authority of the experts that 
the canal would be opened on New Year's 
Day, 1915, even the friends of the canal said, 
*'Ah! of course, it is very nice to say so; 
but these things are never done as quickly 
as people hope; and it will be some years 
after." Well, instead of being some time 
after the date fixed, it will be some time be- 
fore the date fixed. I believe that the canal 



WORLD FEATS 153 

will be opened from six months to a year 
before. 

The work has two great features : the 
Culebra Cut, which I have been considering; 
and the great dam at Gatun. The latter is 
to imprison the waters of the Chagres and 
other streams into a lake with an area of one 
hundred and sixty-four square miles. This 
work is advancing steadily, and just as 
successfully as the work on the Culebra Cut. 
The water which is ultimately to fill the lock 
is now flowing through the concrete spillway 
in the center of the dam, the Chagres having 
been diverted from its bed and placecj under 
complete control. The construction of the 
dam has advanced sufficiently to convince the 
engineers in charge of the work of its absolute 
stability and imperviousness. The concrete 
work on the lock is advancing so rapidly that 
the first double-set at Gatun will be completed 
this coming November, and the engineer in 
charge has announced that all the concrete 
in all the locks will be in place two years 
hence. The date of final completion and for- 
mal opening of the canal to the commerce of 
the world will be determined by the time 
consumed in placing one great steel gate, 
emergency dams, and all appliances for 
operating the docks. But those in charge 



154 WORLD FEATS 

of the work announce without hesitation 
that everything will be finished well in ad- 
vance of January i, 1915. 

This is a stupendous record of achieve- 
ment. As a people, we are rather fond of 
criticizing ourselves, and sometimes with 
very great justice; but even the most pessi- 
mistic critic should sometimes think of what 
is to our credit. Among our assets of the 
past ten years will be placed the extraordinary 
ability, integrity, and success with which we 
have handled all the problems inherited as 
the result of the Spanish War; the way we 
have handled ourselves in the Philippines, 
in Cuba, in Porto Rico, in San Domingo, and 
in Panama. The cruise of the battle fleet 
around the world was a striking proof that 
we had made good with the Navy; and what 
we have done at Panama represents the 
accomplishment of one of the great feats of 
the ages. It is a feat which reflects the high- 
est honor upon our country; and our grati- 
tude is due to every man who has taken an 
honorable part in any capacity in bringing 
about its performance. 

So far, I have been speaking of what we 
have done, and you have applauded it. It 
is very interesting to tell what we have done; 
but that is not the important thing. The 



WORLD FEATS 155 

important thing is to do the next job well. 
We have now a further duty to perform in 
connection with the canal, and that is forti- 
fying it. We took that canal upon the ground 
that Uncle Sam was big enough to tackle the 
job, and now we have got to show that Uncle 
Sam is big enough to make a good job of it. 
We are in honor bound to fortify it ourselves, 
and only by so doing can we effectively guar- 
antee its neutrality; and, moreover, effectively 
guarantee that it shall not be used against 
us. I want the good will of every nation; 
I want to deserve it; but in vital matters I 
do not want to trust to it. The good will is 
felt immensely if we have a first-class Navy 
and adequate fortifications; but nothing will 
help us keep in a state of profound peace 
more than a knowledge that our men can 
shoot straight, and will, if they have to. The 
chief material advantage — certainly one of 
the chief material advantages — which we 
shall gain by the canal's construction is the 
way in which it will, for defensive purposes, 
double the power of the United States Navy. 
We must either have a Navy so big that we 
shall be able to put half in the Atlantic and 
half in the Pacific, or must be able to put into 
either ocean a Navy of the present size. It 
is not a blunder, but a crime, to divide the 



156 WORLD FEATS 

present Navy between the two. We must 
either double it, or we must be able to trans- 
fer our fleet from the Pacific to the Atlantic 
when we need it. That can be done only 
through a canal. 

To refuse to fortify the canal, and, above 
all, to consider for a moment such an act of 
utter weakness and folly as to invite other 
nations to step in and guarantee the neutrality 
of this purely American work (and thereby 
really to make it certain that, in the event of 
war, we should find the canal used against 
us, as our fleets would be forbidden to pass 
through it, or else our opponent's fleets per- 
mitted to) would be to incur, and quite right- 
fully, the contempt of the world. It would 
mean the complete abandonment of the 
Monroe Doctrine ; it would be a wicked blow 
to our prestige in the Pacific; and, moreover, 
it would be in its essence treason to the des- 
tiny of this repubHc. We built that canal 
ourselves, and we do not have to have any- 
body else to come in and say how it shall be 
used. If it was not our intention to have our 
sayso in the management of that canal, we 
had no business to undertake it, or to go into 
the expenditure of the scores of millions 
involved. It is not an act showing a peaceful 
disposition to ask other nations to come in 



WORLD FEATS 157 

and do all that we ought to do. I want Uncle 
Sam to be peaceful; I want Uncle Sam to 
show scrupulous regard for the rights of 
others; but I want to see Uncle Sam owe his 
safety to two facts : in the first place, that he 
will do nothing but good to men; and, in the 
second place, that he will submit to wrong 
from no man. Therefore, I am glad we 
have an efficient fleet; therefore, I am glad 
that we have completed in such splendid and 
successful fashion the Panama Canal; and, 
therefore, I say that unless, as a people, we 
intend to occupy a contemptible attitude, we 
will fortify and police and defend that canal 
ourselves, and see that it is used impartially 
by all the nations of the earth, and at the same 
time see that no nation shall use it against 
our own interests. 



PART II 
THE OLD MORALITIES 



THE CROOK 

SPEECH AT KANSAS CITY 
1 September, 19 lo 

Mr. Chairman, I thank you for the more 
than kind words that you have said. I dis- 
agree with some of them. The American 
people owe nothing to the man whom they 
have honored by making him President 
compared to what that man owes to the 
American people. I am most deeply sensible 
of what I owe to the people of the United 
States, and I shall try to carry myself as, in 
my opinion, every man who has been Presi- 
dent should carry himself— as a man bound 
in every action of his private life to try to 
justify the faith that the people reposed in 
him. I particularly appreciate what the 
Chairman said when he said that I had always 
put patriotism above party. In my judg- 
ment, no man is a good American who is not, 
of course, an American first — an American 
before he is a member of any section of the 
American people such as a party or a class. 
I hold that the only real service which a 
party man can render his party is to make 

M 161 



i62 THE CROOK 

that party more responsive to the needs of 
the American people. 

There are certain matters which should 
never be treated as party matters; and fore- 
most among these is the great and vital 
virtue of honesty. Honesty should be treated 
as a prime necessity to our success as a na- 
tion. The minute that a question of honesty 
as against dishonesty is involved, then we 
must all act together as Americans, without 
the slightest regard to party affiliations. I 
do not care who a thief is ; I regard him as a 
thief and not as a party man. The first man 
to attack a scoundrel in any party should be 
the man of that party. The Chairman was 
kind enough to say that I had acted up to 
my words; that I had not preached what 
I had not at least tried to practice while in 
office. I certainly did try always to proceed 
upon the theory that there would be no need 
of my political opponents raising the cry of 
"Turn the rascals out," for I would turn 
them out myself. With the invaluable aid 
of Senator Bristow here, I turned the rascals 
out of the Post Office Department; and we 
discriminated just to this extent between 
any Republican and any Democrat: we 
gave the precedence to the Republican in 
pitching him out. 



THE CROOK 163 

And as we dealt with the crooked public 
official, so we dealt with the crooked private 
citizen. If satisfactory evidence was brought 
before me in my capacity as President, I 
had the Attorney-General of the United 
States to proceed against the highest poli- 
tician, whether it was a Republican Senator 
in Oregon or in Kansas or a Democratic 
Governor in Oklahoma. And I will add, 
gentlemen, that the unfavorable opinions 
entertained of me by the Senators, Govern- 
ors, and other people in question I have 
always considered as a tribute. I think I 
value the ill will of those men almost as 
much as I value the good will of the honest 
Senators, the honest Governors, and honest 
public men with whom it has been my great 
privilege to work for the welfare of the 
people. We gave the same justice to the 
big man and to the little man, to the rich 
and to the poor man. We never attacked a 
man because he was a man of one political 
faith or another, because he did or did not 
possess wealth; and we never shielded him 
because he was poor or rich, because he be- 
longed to any particular church or to any 
particular party. But I also wish you es- 
pecially to remember that we never hesitated 
to shield him and stand up for him once we 



i64 THE CROOK 

were convinced that he was improperly 
attacked. There is no greater foe of honesty 
— no more evil enemy of honesty — than 
the man who, for any reason, in any capacity, 
attacks, or seeks to attack, an honest man 
for a crime which he has not committed. 
Falsely accusing an honest man of dis- 
honesty is an act which stands on the same 
level of infamy with that of the dishonest 
man himself; and it is no higher duty to 
attack the dishonest man than it is to ex- 
onerate the honest man falsely accused; and 
I should be ashamed to hesitate the fraction 
of a second longer in one case than in the 
other. 

Remember that honesty cannot be uni- 
lateral. Good citizens should cordially dis- 
trust the man who can never see dishonesty 
excepting in men of the class he dislikes. 
The reckless agitator who invariably singles 
out men of wealth as furnishing the only 
examples of dishonesty; the equally unscru- 
pulous — but no more unscrupulous — re- 
actionary who can see dishonesty only in a 
blackmailing politician or a crooked labor 
leader; both stand on the same plane of 
obnoxiousness. You will never get honesty 
from politicians until you exact honesty from 
business men; on the other hand, you brand 



THE CROOK i6s 

yourselves as fools or as hypocrites if you 
say that the corporation owner, or the em- 
ployer, is always the dishonest man, and the 
poor man never; that it is only the wealthy 
man who corrupts the politician and never 
the politician who blackmails the corpora- 
tion. 

Any man in his senses knows that there 
are plenty of corporations in this country 
that prosper by bribing legislators just as 
they prosper by swindhng the public; and 
any man in his senses ought to know, in 
addition, that there are plenty of corrupt 
men of small means who, in legislative or 
other bodies, try to blackmail corporations, 
and try to blackmail other people as well. 
If they doubt this, let them look at the reve- 
lations of corruption in my own state — New 
York — and in yours, my hearers — here in 
Missouri; let them look at what has occurred 
in CaUfornia and what has occurred in 
IlHnois. In Illinois, for instance, one of the 
rascalities developed by the recent investiga- 
tion was the existence of a combination of 
legislators who blackmailed, not only wealthy 
corporations, but poor fishermen along a 
certain river, forcing them to pay to prevent 
legislation which would have interfered with 
their business. Remember that the reason 



i66 THE CROOK 

in each case why a man committed a given 
crooked act is usually to be found in the 
fact that he was a scoundrel; it was not 
because he happened to blackmail a rich 
man or a poor man, but because he was 
crooked and he blackmailed the first man 
that came handy; and you help him if you 
confine your denunciations of dishonesty to 
include only the men of one class. Distrust 
men who would teach you to hate only men 
of wealth who go wrong; distrust equally 
the man, judge, newspaper writer, or wealthy 
private citizen, who cannot see wrong if it 
is committed by the big business men with 
whom he associates. Above all, distrust the 
man who ever seeks to get you to support 
him on the ground that he will do something 
wrong in your interest. 

Now, scoundrels who do these kinds of 
things are, of course, the very men who, on 
the one hand, will blackmail a corporation 
if they get a chance, and, on the other hand, 
will cheerfully, if the chance occurs, sell 
themselves to the corporation against the 
interests of the public. Their corruption is 
no more due to the action of the corporation 
than the corruption of the corporation is 
due to their action; and evil, and not good, 
is done by the honest but misguided man 



THE CROOK 167 

who would persuade you that either fact is 
true. Our duty is to war with equal stern- 
ness against the corrupt man of great wealth 
and the small man who makes a trade of 
corruption; our fight is against both the 
swindHng corporation and the blackmaihng 
or bribe-taking politician. The politician 
who whines that he is corrupted by a big 
corporation and would have been good 
enough if the corporation had let him alone 
may safely be put down as a man whose 
virtue was so frail that it was not worth 
preserving. 

We cannot afford to limit a campaign 
against corruption to those who happen to 
have a certain social status. We need laws 
which shall put the corporation out of busi- 
ness so far as concerns corrupting the serv- 
ants of the public and betraying the rights 
of the public. I believe that the great issue 
now before the public is the doing away with 
special privilege in all its forms; doing away 
with the power of the big corporation to 
control legislation in its interests and to 
interfere in politics in order to secure privileges 
to which it is not entitled. But I regard the 
essential factor in this campaign as being an 
aroused civic conscience which will unspar- 
ingly condemn dishonesty in every form and 



i68 THE CROOK 

in every man, high or low. It is not the 
man who inveighs only against corruption as 
seen in men of wealth who hopes to end all 
corruption on the part of men of wealth. 
It is the man who insists on honesty, who 
strives to bring about a condition when 
honesty shall be accepted as a matter of 
course throughout our nation, and when the 
conscience of the community — the popular 
spirit in the community — will not tolerate 
any man who is a crooked man or a dis- 
honest man. The reckless would-be re- 
former or reckless demagogue who, in speak- 
ing or writing, seeks to persuade us that we 
need pay heed to corruption only when it 
shows itself in the rich man, is doing as 
great a moral wrong as the rich man whose 
low moral standard tends to lower the social 
standard of the whole community. The 
people of this country will get justice from 
the corporations only if they both do justice 
to them and rigidly exact it from them. 
Unless they do justice to rich men, they put 
a premium upon injustice and dishonesty 
among rich men. Let us hold them to the 
strictest accountability for any wrongdoing; 
but let us insist upon honesty in our own 
ranks no less than in theirs. Let us war on 
crookedness of every kind in the man of 



THE CROOK 169 

small means as well as the man of large 
means, and in the man of large means 
exactly as in the man of small means. Let 
us judge each man by his conduct and not 
by his social or financial condition. 

My friends, you applaud these sentiments; 
you could not do otherwise. It is a good 
thing to applaud them; but the necessary 
thing is to go back to your own homes and 
in your daily lives to live up to them. Words 
are of no consequence whatever except as 
they are realized in deeds. The promise of 
a candidate is worse than worthless if it is 
not made good by his actions if he is elected. 
A liar on the stump is, if anything, just a 
shade worse than the Har off the stump; 
and, on the other hand, if you come to pub- 
lic meetings to indulge in the luxury of ap- 
plauding fine sentiments which you forget as 
soon as you leave the building, then all you 
have done is to weaken a little the spring of 
your own conscience. If I were asked to 
name the three faults against which we of 
this free republic should most unrelentingly 
war, I should name dishonesty, lawless vio- 
lence, and, in the third place, untruthfulness 
and mendacity — especially mendacity which 
takes the form of slander. I have been in 
politics for thirty years. For thirty years I 



170 THE CROOK 

have striven, so far as the power was given 
me, to fight for the cause of decency; and I 
feel that the greatest drawback in any such 
struggle is the man who consistently speaks 
what is not true until he misleads the public, 
so that they cannot tell the true from the 
false. I do not care whether that man is a 
politician in the campaign or a writer in a 
magazine or in the public press. The very 
reason that makes it essential that we should 
point out corruption and misconduct where 
they exist also makes it essential that we 
should not lie by saying that they exist 
where they do not exist. The man that 
falsely accuses a public servant, who is 
honest, of dishonesty, is bringing joy to the 
heart of every crooked man. Nothing so 
pleases the dishonest man in public life as to 
have an honest man falsely accused, for the 
result of innumerable accusations finally is 
to produce a habit of mind in the public 
which accepts each accusation as having 
something true in it and none as being all 
true; so that, finally, they believe that the 
honest man is a little crooked and that the 
crooked man is not much more dishonest 
than the rest. The enormous power of the 
writers of the country in the public press 
and in the magazines alike is such that 



THE CROOK 171 

those wielding it should feel that their re- 
sponsibility is as great as that of the public 
servants themselves. 

If, day after day, you read what is not 
true, it becomes finally impossible for you to 
tell what is black from what is white; and 
you look upon all men, good and bad, alike. 
The Har is as bad as the thief; and he is 
the right-hand support of the thief. I think 
that the very highest duty that can be per- 
formed by any man who writes is to point 
out corruption fearlessly and expose all that 
is crooked — all that is evil; and only less 
high, and less high by the merest shade, is his 
duty to speak the truth only and never to 
accuse an honest man of dishonesty. I do 
not ask it on behalf of the honest man; I 
ask it on behalf of the pubhc who by such 
accusations are robbed of the power of dis- 
crimination. In the long run the honest 
man's reputation will take care of itself. It 
is not for him, but it is for the people at 
large who are so puzzled by seeing every 
man, whether he is honest or not, attacked in 
the same fashion, that they come to regard 
all accusations as, on the whole, false, and 
all men accused as having done something 
that warrants accusation. 

And, my friends, so of lawless violence. 



172 THE CROOK 

I have said that I would strive to punish 
equally the rich and the poor man who does 
wrong. I would go a bit further, and would 
punish the rich man a little more, because he 
has had better opportunities. But be equally- 
stern in dealing with crimes of violence. Do 
you realize the danger that this country s in 
from corruption, and do you realize the danger 
also that comes from lawless violence ^ Take 
the workingmen, the laboring men. I will 
do everything in my power for them except 
what is wrong, and that I would do neither 
for them nor for any one else. In time of 
civil disorder, when laws are set at naught 
and mob violence rules, the first duty of every 
honest and upright civil official is to restore 
order. All question of reform must wait 
until order is restored. While the mob rules 
there is no time to find out the right and the 
wrong of the question at issue between that 
mob and any person or any corporation. 
No civilization can exist unless the laws are 
enforced in due and orderly fashion, and the 
corrupt man who, with his wealth, plunders 
his neighbors and corrupts the representatives 
of the people is no worse than the man who 
in any way incites his fellow men to violence 
and murder. 

I have just come from a trip to Africa, 



THE CROOK 173 

and I had a very good time there. Afterwards 
I passed through Europe, and I came back 
thinking well of the countries I had visited, 
with friendly feelings for them; but, O my 
countrymen, I came back thinking more 
strongly than ever before that, in spite of all 
our shortcomings, and in spite of all the 
things that we have left undone and ought 
to have done, nowhere on the earth does 
the average man or the average woman have 
such a chance to get the best possible out 
of life as here in our own land. Now, I 
would not for one moment blind myself to 
the need of hard work to drive out what is 
evil in our own country. Let us face the 
evil boldly, and do our best to overcome it. 
Do not, however, let us make the mistake 
of shutting our eyes to the good. On the 
whole, in this great democracy of the West, 
in this great republic which stands on a 
continent, which grasps the ocean on either 
side, popular rights are better guarded than 
anywhere else, and the average man is given 
a better chance than anywhere else. My 
friends, be proud of that fact, and realize the 
responsibility that accompanies it. 

I was struck by two things especially while 
traveling abroad. One was that in every 
country I visited the name of America is the 



174 THE CROOK 

symbol of golden hope for the people of 
other lands. The man with whom life has 
gone hard, — the man who feels that fate is 
against him, the man who, do what he can, 
is unable to succeed as he is entitled to 
succeed, — looks longingly to this land as the 
land which contains the promise for men like 
him. But, my friends, there was another 
and sadder side; there was something else. 
The news of every crime of corruption, every 
crime of lawless violence, committed here in 
the United States is sent abroad. The news 
goes abroad to sadden the hearts of those 
who hope for the success of popular govern- 
ment, and is cause for sardonic mirth to every 
reactionary who desires to see the great demo- 
cratic experiment of government by and for 
the people fail here in the West. Every 
time that there is an act of flagrant corrup- 
tion here in the United States, or deed of 
lawless violence by a mob, or corruption in 
public life or business life, every time a 
murderer is acquitted by a jury when he 
ought to have been convicted, every time a 
rich malefactor is let off on a technicality, or 
otherwise there is a failure to secure justice 
in any case — every time that such things 
occur the heart of every opponent of free 
government is gladdened, and the heart of 



THE CROOK 175 

every man who hopes for the regeneration of 
humanity through the appHcation of demo- 
cratic principles to-day is saddened. I do 
not suppose that if we refuse to do what is 
right for our own sakes we can be expected to 
do what is right for the sake of others. 
Yet I beheve that you ought to feel a burden 
of obligation resting upon you, not only be- 
cause you are the citizens of this republic, but 
because each of you is, in a measure, the cus- 
todian of the hope of the world. If we fail 
here, if we in America fail in our great experi- 
ment of self-government, woe to us, and woe 
also to all the nations of the earth, whom we 
will forever rob of the brightest hope that they 
now have. I ask of you men and women 
here — I ask that, in your private and in your 
public lives, you carry yourselves as you should 
carry yourselves — you, the men and women 
upon whose shoulders rests the proud fabric 
of the greatest republic upon which the sun 
has ever shone. I ask that you do this for 
your own sakes; I ask more earnestly that 
you do it for the sake of the children who are 
to come after you, for the children who are 
to inherit this our land and have a right to 
ask that they receive it from us as we received 
it from our fathers; that we shall pass it on 
to them intact; and I ask this not only for 



176 THE CROOK 

the sake of your own children, but for the 
sake of the world, so that America shall 
always stand as the symbol of golden hope 
to the nations of mankind. 



THE PUBLIC PRESS 

SPEECH AT THE MILWAUKEE AUDITORIUM 

7 September, 1910 

Before I come down to the subject of my 
speech I wish to say a word about the trade 
schools — the municipal trade school which 
I visited this morning. When I received the 
invitation from the Milwaukee Press Club 
while I was in mid-Africa, I accepted it 
promptly. I wished to come here to your 
city, and I was particularly glad to come as 
the guest of your Club, and I soon after- 
wards made the stipulation that I should be 
taken to see your municipal schools for boys 
and girls. I wish it had been in my power 
to do more than a fraction of the other things 
that the very good people who are my hosts 
wanted me to do, but it was simply a physi- 
cal impossibility. In every city that I have 
visited, my hosts, in the very nicest and 
kindliest spirit, have proceeded to see that I 
did not suiFer one minute from physical 
stagnation, and they have also proceeded 
upon the assumption that I could be happy 
only if I were given not one minute to my- 
self. I wish to say that while all did their 
N 177 



178 THE PUBLIC PRESS 

duty in that respect, I think my hosts of 
Milwaukee gave me a larger program 
than an)Awhere I have yet visited. 

I wanted to see the trade schools because 
I regard you as having taken here in Mil- 
waukee an all-important first step in in- 
corporating these trade schools into your 
common-school system. Our republic has 
no justification unless it is a genuine democ- 
racy — a democracy economically as well as 
politically — a democracy in which there is 
a really sincere eflFort to realize the ideal of 
equality of opportunity for all men. And 
there can be no such equality of oppor- 
tunity if a man is either helped by special 
privilege or hampered by the special 
privileges which others have. Now, one 
way to secure such equality of opportunity 
is, so far as possible, to give equality of 
start. In other words, give the full-grown 
man, the full-grown woman, who starts in 
life to make his or her way according to 
the abilities given to him or her, as good a 
chance as we are able to give them. That 
means that it is our duty to provide such 
means of education as will enable each man 
to become a self-respecting unit in the com- 
munity. If there is a large class of people 
who, because good chances are denied to 



THE PUBLIC PRESS 179 

theiUs live under intolerable and harsh condi- 
tions, and are beaten down and degraded by 
the forces against which they contend — if 
there exists such a large class, it is not only a 
bad thing for them, but it is a bad thing for all 
of us. It might as well be accepted as axio- 
matic that in the long run, speaking generally, 
we are going to go up or down together. 
And if there is a large class of people who 
undeservedly find conditions intolerable, it will 
be bad for the whole republic. Now, mind 
you, I said undeservedly. There always will 
be, as long as mankind continues as it is at 
the present time, in every community a cer- 
tain number of people who do not perform 
their duty because they do not try. Now, I 
have nothing to say in behalf of them. The 
individual who is naturally vicious, naturally 
lazy, and is a man of jealous disposition, or 
a man of arrogant disposition, I am not 
pleading for; and I have a hearty contempt 
for those who try to excuse his shortcomings 
upon the plea of bad social conditions. If a 
man is lazy, if he is vicious, if he will not do 
his whole work, I am very sorry for his wife 
and children; but I am not in the least sorry 
for him. There are too many people who 
have a right to sympathy for me to waste it 
upon those who have not the right to it. I 



i8o THE PUBLIC PRESS 

not only have sympathy for those who are 
oppressed through no fault of theirs, but I 
believe that we should do all that we can do 
for them. 

Now, the trade schools here mark the be- 
ginning of an effort to fit each man to do the 
very best that lies in him in the world. There 
is not a surplusage here, or anywhere, of 
the highly skilled man who can do his par- 
ticular job in the best possible manner; there 
is always a demand for him in any walk of 
life. When you get our average laboring 
man — our average wage worker — turned 
out of school that kind of man, you will have 
gone a long way towards solving some of the 
most difficult questions with which this 
republic has to deal. Well, that is just 
what I find you are doing here with the few 
people — there are only very few — whom 
you are turning out of these industrial 
schools. The boy is not taken in until he 
is about sixteen or eighteen. He must have 
gone through a certain amount in the public 
schools; he must be able to read and write 
English; to do a certain amount of arith- 
metic ; he must have reached about the eighth 
grade in the grammar school. Many I found 
had been but one or two years in the high 
schools. Then he is put into this school, — 



THE PUBLIC PRESS i8i 

this trade school, — and then he graduates 
at twenty or twenty-one, and he is able to 
get a job at once. He is trained during 
those two years to become a skilled work- 
man, and, as a by-product to that industrial 
school training, he unquestionably tends to 
become a good citizen; he is pretty apt to be 
a decent, law-abiding, self-respecting member 
of the community. 

There is another thing. I am sure that 
we have all now awakened to the fact that 
it is not well to have a system of education 
which tends to educate people away from 
their life work; and it is a very bad thing to 
have a system of education which makes men 
look down on skilled and trained muscular 
exertion — the skilled and trained work of 
the body. Too often the son of the skilled 
mechanic, the blacksmith, the carpenter, feels 
that he is rising if he becomes a third-rate 
clerk. Now, that is a very unfortunate con- 
dition of things. We ought to do our best 
to see that reward and respect come in greater 
proportion than at present to the man who 
does the best form of manual labor. Person- 
ally, it has never been any effort to me to give 
that respect, because I could not help giving 
it. I have always felt a very real regard, a 
very real respect, for the man who works at a 



i82 THE PUBLIC PRESS 

handicraft with such skill as to show mastery 
of his muscles. I cannot imagine a finer 
type of citizen than the average engineer, 
fireman, or trainman generally on the rail- 
roads. I have prized many honors I have 
received, but there has been no honor that 
I have prized more than being elected an hon- 
orary member of the Locomotive Firemen's 
Brotherhood; and I prize it because those 
men have the qualities that I would like to 
have and that I admire in men. The smith, 
the carpenter, the skilled mechanic of any 
kind is as much entitled to respect as any 
man who succeeds in any other profession; 
and by giving him special training in these 
special schools — a special training which will 
bring a special reward — you are doing your 
part to restore the equilibrium of regard in 
which the professions and trades should be 
held in the community. 

I was almost more interested in the girls' 
school than in the boys', because, important 
though it is to have good men in a commu- 
nity, It IS even more important to nave good 
women; and while I beheve that the nor- 
mal end striven for by every man and woman 
aHke should be a happy family Hfe, — the 
Hfe of husband and wife, father and mother, — 
and therefore that woman's training should be 



THE PUBLIC PRESS 183 

primarily for home work, yet, as girls under 
modern conditions so often have to go into 
industry, it is most important that if they do 
go into it they should go properly equipped. 
It is bad for a man to have to take em- 
ployment at less than a living wage — at less 
than a wage that will enable him to support 
himself as a self-respecting man; but it is 
worse for a girl to have to take such em- 
ployment, for she is exposed to dangers to 
which the man is not. These schools turn 
out girls sufficiently trained to enable them 
to get reasonable remuneration — a remuner- 
ation which will enable them to live de- 
cently, and remove them from the pitiable 
condition of being untrained girls competing 
with multitudes of other untrained girls for 
an insufficient number of places which, if 
obtained, yield a wage insufficient to enable 
the girl to live. 

I believe that the workingmen and work- 
ingwomen of Milwaukee ought to realize 
what chances these schools open to their 
children, — to the boys, and, above all, to the 
girls, — and ought to take advantage of them. 

And now, my friends, I come to what 
I have especially to say this evening. The 
Press Club having sent all the way to Africa 
to ask me to speak to them, I am going to 



i84 THE PUBLIC PRESS 

repay them with gross ingratitude by speaking 
with frankness about their profession. 

In our country I am incHned to think that 
almost, if not quite, the most important pro- 
fession is that of the newspaper man, includ- 
ing the man of the magazines, especially 
the cheap magazines, and the weeklies; and I 
speak as a member of the brotherhood my- 
self. The newspaper men — pubHshers, 
editors, reporters — are just as much public 
servants as are the men in the government 
service themselves, whether those men be 
elected or appointed officers. Now, we 
have always held in higher honor the public 
man who did his duty, and we have always 
felt that the public man who did not do his 
duty was deserving of a peculiar degree of 
reprobation. And just the same way about 
the newspaper man. The editor, the pub- 
lisher, the reporter, who honestly and 
truthfully puts the exact facts before the 
public, who does not omit for improper rea- 
sons things that ought to be stated, who does 
not say what is not true, who does not color 
his facts so as to give false impressions, who 
does not manufacture his facts, who really 
is ready, in the first place, to find out what 
the truth is, and, in the next place, to state it 
accurately — that man occupies one of the 



THE PUBLIC PRESS 185 

most honorable positions in the community. 
A number of years ago I knew a citizen of 
Milwaukee who was just such a man as I have 
described, and who was, I felt, not only one 
of the most useful citizens of Milwaukee, 
but one of the most useful citizens of the 
United States — Horace Rublee. Now, it 
is open to any man to disagree with Horace 
Rublee on public questions. It is perfectly 
possible that if he had lived to the present day, 
he and I might not have agreed on all public 
questions; but he was a man of such trans- 
parent uprightness and honesty, of such 
vehement scorn of what was corrupt and un- 
true, of a virtue so nice, so sensitive, that the 
mere thought of corruption could not enter 
into any human being's mind in thinking 
of him. He was so fearless — as fearless of 
the mob as of the corrupt corporation — 
that whatever the differences of your political 
opinion, you could not but respect him; 
you could not but feel that he was a very real 
asset of value in the community. Now, 
you compare the attitude of the man whom 
I have just named with the attitude of certain 
other men, whom I shall not name, and 
whose reputation and character are such that 
any man who works for them, or for whom 
they work, always, when he finds himself in 



i86 THE PUBLIC PRESS 

decent society, mentions his occupation with 
either defiance or apology. 

Power always brings with it responsibility. 
You cannot have power to work well without 
having so much power as to be able to work 
ill, if you turn yourselves that way. The 
very fact that a newspaper has a great 
power for good means that it has also a 
great power for evil. I do not think that 
is enough. I will go further. I think that 
it is not enough for a newspaper man to 
make up his mind that he won't use the paper 
to debauch the public conscience; if he is 
neutral about good and bad and makes his 
profession, so far as he is able, neutral in 
doing good and evil, it simply becomes a 
profession for which you have not much use 
in the way of blame and not much more use 
in the way of praise. He must have high 
ideals, and he must be able to get those ideals 
adopted by a reasonable proportion of his 
fellows, if the profession is to rank as high as 
it ought to. 

A few years ago, at a meeting of newspaper 
men in New York, there was a speech made, 
and, I am sorry to say, greeted with applause, 
which always seemed to me to explain the 
degradation of a portion of the press. The 
speaker was connected in a high position with 



THE PUBLIC PRESS 187 

one of the papers of great circulation, and in 
addressing his fellow newspaper men, said, 
in effect (I cannot pretend to quote his exact 
words), that it was nonsense to talk about 
a newspaper having a mission, whether to do 
good or to advance reforms; that the news- 
paper business was to sell as many copies 
of the paper as possible, and that meant 
giving the public anything the public wanted; 
and if it wanted what was not good, then that 
was the affair of the pubHc and not the affair 
of the paper. The sentiment was applauded 
by a good many of those present, and I am 
sorry to say that the applause of many of them 
was sincere, to judge by the way their papers 
have since acted. The speaker said the 
newspaper business was like any other busi- 
ness; like that of storekeepers who tried to 
give their customers what they wanted; that 
the newspaper should do the same thing. In 
the first place, he was wrong. A storekeeper 
who now tried to give his customers every- 
thing they wanted in the way of food would 
be speedily arrested under the pure food 
law; and there would be any number of 
customers who, after their wants were grati- 
fied, would find that they came under the 
exercise of the police power of the state. So, 
then, from even the lowest standpoint that 



i88 THE PUBLIC PRESS 

newspaper man was wrong. He was not 
endeavoring to put the newspaper business 
on the level of other businesses; he was 
trying to put it below other businesses. 

Now, the highest type of newspaper man 
ought to try to put his business above all other 
businesses. The editor, who stands as a 
judge in a community, should be one of the 
men to whom you would expect to look up, 
because his function as an editor makes him 
a more important man than the average 
merchant, the average business man, the 
average professional man can be. He wields 
great influence; and he cannot escape the 
responsibility of wielding it. If he wields it 
well, honor is his beyond the honor that 
comes to the average man who does well; if 
he wields it ill, shame should be his beyond 
the shame that comes to the average man 
who does ill; and what I say of the editor 
applies to every man who writes for a news- 
paper or a magazine, or who is connected with 
it in any capacity. If he is a good citizen, he 
will take a pride in his work that will make 
him feel that he must try to make it one of 
the best types of work done by any man in 
the whole community. If he is not the right 
type of man, then he is mischievous just in 
proportion as he has power to do good. 



THE PUBLIC PRESS 189 

Exactly as I put as the first requisite of 
the man in public life that he should be 
honest, so I put as the first requisite of the 
man writing for the newspaper that he should 
tell the truth. Now, it is important that 
he should tell the whole truth, for there can 
be no greater service rendered than the ex- 
posure of corruption in either public life 
or in business, or in that intricate web of 
pubHc life and business which exists too 
often in America to-day. I cannot say with 
sufficient emphasis how earnestly I hope 
that corruption will be exposed wherever 
found, and that a man ought to be especially 
anxious to expose it in his own class or in 
his own party. I will draw no distinction 
between corrupt men of my own party and 
those of the opposite party, excepting that I 
will be just a trifle more anxious to get at 
those of my own party, because I feel a little 
more responsible for it. 

If an article is published in a magazine, 
exposing corruption, and the article tells the 
truth, I do not care what it is, the writer has 
rendered the greatest possible service by 
writing it; but I want to be certain that he 
is telling the truth, and if he does not tell the 
truth he does wrong in more than one way. 
It is not only that he wrongs one individual; 



190 THE PUBLIC PRESS 

he wrongs the public, because he deprives 
them of the chance to discriminate between 
honest men and scoundrels. The greatest 
service that can be rendered to the scoundrel 
in public life is to attack the honest man un- 
truthfully. If the honest man is lied about, 
either the lies are believed, and he and the 
scoundrel are put on the same plane of scoun- 
drelism, or else the lies themselves tend to 
produce the impression in the public mind 
that no statements about pubHc men are 
true, and that, therefore, the truth when told 
about corrupt men in pubHc life can be dis- 
regarded also. Incessant falsehood inevitably 
produces in the public mind a certain dis- 
belief in good men and a considerable dis- 
belief in the charges against bad men; so 
that there results the belief that there are 
no men entirely good and no men entirely 
bad, and that they are all about alike and 
colored gray. Now, that is the worst possible 
frame of mind that can be induced in a democ- 
racy like ours. It is essential that the pub- 
lic should know the character of its servants; 
and it is essential that the public should not 
be misled into believing a dishonest public 
servant honest and an honest public servant 
dishonest. Those who mislead them are 
doing as much damage as the dishonest men 



THE PUBLIC PRESS 191 

themselves. Mark Twain, who was not only 
a great humorist, but a great philosopher, 
in his proverbs by Pudd'nhead Wilson, 
said that there are eight hundred and sixty- 
nine different kinds of Hes, but that the 
only one authoritatively prohibited is bearing 
false witness against your neighbor. The 
politician — I am a politician — and the 
writer for periodicals or the press — and I am 
one again — should bear steadily in mind 
that the eighth and ninth commandments are 
equally binding: "Thou shalt not steal; 
Thou shalt not bear false witness against 
thy neighbor." So much for the newspaper 
men, my friends. 

Now, speaking for all of us, we have much 
to do to make this republic a better place to 
live in, to secure a better standard of justice 
and fair deahng between man and man in 
it. Much can be done by legislation and 
much by honest administration of the law. 
Do not understand me as minimizing that. 
There are many laws, many schemes of legis- 
lation, which I want to see put on the statute 
books of both nation and state. There is 
much that I desire to see done in the direc- 
tion of doing away with special privileges 
and divorcing corrupt business from political 
activities, in the direction of securing a better 



192 THE PUBLIC PRESS 

chance for each man to show the stufF that 
is in him. I realize to the full the importance 
of what can be done by all of us acting col- 
lectively, — through the government, — but 
after all, when all has been said and done, the 
thing that is most important is for each of 
us to apply, in his or her way, the old hum- 
drum, workaday virtues; and as regards 
those, I know quite well that preaching does 
not amount to anything unless the preaching 
is transmuted into practice. Your opinions 
depend at least as much on your actions as 
your actions upon your opinions. You 
fathers and mothers in the audience well 
know that if you get your children to behave 
in a certain fashion so that they always do 
tell the truth, they will formulate the theory 
that it is always right to tell the truth; that 
their actions will influence their opinions 
rather than their opinions their actions. 

I remember a young fellow who came to 
me for a little advice. He said he felt timid 
about horses and asked how he could get over 
the timidity, and I told him, by acting as if 
he were not timid. It took him some time to 
realize that the only way to get rid of the 
wrong sensation was to perform the act as if 
he were enjoying the right sensation. He 
did not make himself act as a brave man 



THE PUBLIC PRESS 193 

because he was not afraid, but finally ceased 
to be afraid because he acted like a brave 
man. Now, I want you to do the same way 
in citizenship. It is a fine thing to come to a 
public meeting like this; but it is not doing 
you or me a mite of good if I speak insin- 
cerely and you merely listen and applaud and 
don't do anything else after you get to your 
homes. If I preach to you what I do not try 
to live up to myself, I am a despicable char- 
acter, and you have no business to listen to 
me; and if you find yourselves applauding 
sentiments of justice and righteousness, and 
then go back home and encourage and con- 
nive at dishonesty or mendacity, then the 
right stuff is not in you. The only value of 
words uttered or Hstened to comes when they 
are transmuted into deeds. 

I believe in the future of this republic, and 
I believe in it primarily because I believe that, 
more and more, our citizens are waking up to 
the need of making practice conform to pro- 
fession, and are declining to listen to spread- 
eagle heroics, which they accept merely as 
intellectual efforts divorced from all practical 
application, and are insisting that the con- 
duct of their representatives and leaders shall 
measurably conform to the standards which 
they have in the abstract accepted as desir- 



194 THE PUBLIC PRESS 

able. I don't want you to put your ideals so 
high that you feel that there is no use in try- 
ing to live up to them, because you cannot 
do it. I don't want you to show that kind of 
citizenship which thinks that a conscientious 
announcement on Sunday that one is a sinner 
condones active participation in sin the other 
six days. 

In a democracy like ours we cannot expect 
the stream to rise higher than its source. 
If the average man and the average woman 
are not of the right type, your pubHc men will 
not be of the right type. The average man 
must be a decent man in his own home, he 
must pull his own weight, he must be a decent 
neighbor, and a man with whom you like to 
work and with whom you like to deal, or he 
cannot be a good citizen. That is good as a 
beginning; but it is not enough. He must 
show in his relations with his fellows and in 
his dealing with the state the essentials of 
good citizenship. Genius is not necessary. 
Genius is a fine thing; but fortunately char- 
acter is not only more common, but better. 
What he needs to show is character, and there 
are three essential qualities going to make up 
character. 

In the first place, there is honesty. The 
bolder a man is the worse he is, if he hasn't 



THE PUBLIC PRESS 195 

honesty. Don't be misled by that unfor- 
tunate trait sometimes shown by our people — 
the trait of deifying mere smartness, meaning 
thereby mental subtlety and ability unen- 
cumbered by any sense of responsibility. 

But honesty is not enough. I don't care 
how honest a man is, if he is timid he is no 
eood. I don't want to see a division of our 
citizenship into good men who are afraid and 
bad men who are not at all afraid. The 
honest man who is afraid is of just as little 
use in civic life as in war. 

You need honesty and then you need 
courage; but both of them together are not 
enough. I don't care how honest a man is 
and how brave he is; if he is a natural-born 
fool you can do nothing with him; and 
perhaps this applies particularly to people 
in the profession of politics. Of course, the 
bolder a politician is, if he is dishonest, the 
worse he is; hunt him out of pubHc life; and 
a feeble, well-meaning, timid politician, like 
the other good, timid people, is of no use; 
but the bold, incorruptible politician who 
stupidly goes wrong may be just as useless 
to a community in the long run as if he were 
hired by some dishonest man to do his work. 
So there is a third quality; that is, you must 
possess the saving grace of common sense. 



196 THE PUBLIC PRESS 

When you get into your average citizen 
honesty, — militant not merely passive hon- 
esty, — courage, and common sense, you will 
find that your representatives in public Hfe 
will soon show the same traits; and when 
they do, we shall have gone a long way 
toward solving the questions which must be 
solved and must be solved aright, if this 
nation is to be, as it shall and will be, not 
merely the greatest republic upon which the 
sun has ever shone, but the nation which 
holds out the lamp of hope to all the other 
nations throughout the world. 



THE GOOD CITIZEN 

SPEECH AT PUEBLO 
30 August, 1910 

In Colorado Springs, some years ago, I 
laid the foundation stone of a Young Men's 
Christian Association building. I am par- 
ticularly glad to have the chance of doing 
so here, where the Chairman, the man chiefly 
concerned in the erection of the building, is 
himself a veteran of the great war, because I 
believe in the two qualities of manliness and 
decency. I don't care a rap for the good 
man who cannot do anything good because 
he is timid; and as for the efficient scoun- 
drel, the more efficient he is, the more I wish 
to hunt him out of politics or business. 
The Young Men's Christian Association 
stands for decency, for the man who does 
well in his family and in his home life, and 
as a neighbor and with reference to the state 
and the nation; and it also stands for the 
manly virtues. Your Chairman, the head of 
this Young Men's Christian Association, lost 
an arm in battle; there is only one person 
I will put just a little ahead of him, and 

197 



198 THE GOOD CITIZEN 

that is his wife, who has brought up six 
children. I put the veteran of the great war 
ahead of every man in the country; but I 
put ahead even of him the good mother, the 
mother who has done her duty and brought 
up well a family of children. 

My friends, yesterday I had the pleasure 
of addressing your people in Denver on the 
subject of Conservation. I noticed that some 
well-meaning person spoke of the doctrine 
as the new doctrine of Conservation. It is 
the identical old doctrine that never has been 
changed — of Conservation, which means 
using as fully as possible the resources of 
the country, but using them in the way that a 
wise private farmer would use his farm; so 
that our children shall be better off, and not 
worse off, because we lived. And I want to 
call attention to the wonderful work done by 
the Forest Service in fighting the great forest 
fires this year. With the very inadequate 
appropriation made for the Forest Service, 
nevertheless, that Service, because of the 
absolute honesty and efficiency with which 
it has been conducted, has borne itself so as 
to make an American proud of having such 
a body of public servants; and they have 
shown the same qualities of heroism in bat- 
tling with the fire, at the peril and sometimes 



THE GOOD CITIZEN 199 

to the loss of their Hves, that the firemen of 
the great cities show in dealing with burning 
buildings. 

One word more. I wish I could get down 
to New Mexico and Arizona, your southern 
and southwestern neighbors. I raised most 
of my regiment in what were then the two 
territories; and you, friends, know that you 
have a peculiar feeling for the man who has 
been in the trenches with you. I have been 
asked by some there to advise them concern- 
ing the constitutions of the new states. I do 
not know enough of the facts to advise them, 
excepting on this point: Don't let them tie 
themselves up so that they cannot untie 
themselves if the need comes. Whenever 
a new constitution is formed, there are always 
two sets of people whom you want to watch. 
In the first place, the demagogue or the well- 
meaning visionary who wants to reaHze the 
millennium by putting what he regards as 
portions of it in parts of the constitution ; 
and in the next place, the big corporation 
attorney, who is not after the millennium at 
all, but who wants to put in, in unobtrusive 
fashion, something that he thinks of advan- 
tage to the special interest which he serves. 
Now, because of both, and because of the 
fact that the Convention may adopt the ad- 



200 THE GOOD CITIZEN 

vice of one or the other, let the people insist 
that when the constitution has been adopted, 
the people shall be able to amend it as they 
find its working necessitates. Do not tie up 
the people so that if they do not like what 
they have got, they have to keep it anyway. 
Leave them so that they can make any 
amendments that are necessary. 

Now, friends, you have here a wonderful 
state ; a state of wonderful resources, — agri- 
cultural, pastoral, mineral, — a state of farms 
and ranches, of mines and cities of industry. 
You have a state with a wonderful industrial 
future, and a state which also ought to be 
the playground of America. More and more, 
our people ought to realize that, for beauty 
of scenery, they cannot do better than come 
to Colorado; and as I do not think any 
eastern man's education complete until he 
goes west of Missouri, I want to have him 
come here as much as possible. But though 
I admire your natural resources, what I 
really care for is the kind of man, the kind 
of woman, you have in this state; and I pin 
my faith to you primarily because I believe 
in the type of citizenship of your state. I 
think the average American a pretty good 
fellow; and I think his wife a still better 
fellow ! And I think that even in states 



THE GOOD CITIZEN 201 

where she does not vote, too! And while 
I am very glad to see all of you here, those 
whom I am most glad to see are the men and 
women who carry small folk. They are sure 
to be good citizens. 

In its essence, good government is nothing 
very comphcated. What we need to insist 
on is not genius, but the development of the 
ordinary qualities that make man or woman 
the kind of man or woman we care to meet in 
private Hfe. If the man is a good husband, 
and the woman a good wife; if they do their 
duty as father and mother; if they are good 
neighbors, then you have the foundations of 
citizenship laid. But do not allow any man 
to impose on you, especially a pubHc man, 
by asking you to accept decency and domestic 
virtue as an offset to profligacy in pubhc Hfe. 
The pubhc man should be honest in the big- 
gest and broadest acceptation of the term. 
If he is not, then it is your fault if you toler- 
ate him in pubhc hfe, no matter what he may 
be in private hfe. Make it felt by your 
representatives that the taint of corruption 
ruins a man forever in your eyes. Make it 
felt that you demand in your representative, 
not merely law-honesty, not merely the 
honesty that consists in escaping indictment, 
but that you demand the honesty that entitles 



202 THE GOOD CITIZEN 

a man to the good will of those who know 
him intimately enough to tell whether or not 
he is really straight. And remember that 
you cannot have honesty in great things unless 
you have it in small things. If you send 
to Congress or to the legislature, or put in 
executive office, a man who will try to black- 
mail a corporation, you can guarantee that, 
if the price is high enough, he will sell out to 
the corporation. Make no mistake; never 
trust a man who says that he is only a little 
crooked, and that the crookedness is exercised 
in your interest. If he will be crooked for 
you, he will be crooked against you. So 
I ask that our citizens insist in their public 
representatives upon the same qualities which 
they insist upon in private Hfe — upon cour- 
age, upon honesty, and upon the saving 
grace of common sense. 



PART III 

THE WORD AND THE DEED 



CORRUPTION 

SPEECH BEFORE THE HAMILTON CLUB, 
CHICAGO 

8 September, 1910 

I HAVE had a long and, to me, a most 
pleasant and profitable connection with this 
club. I had known you before I had at- 
tained any special prominence in public 
life. When I came back from the Cuban 
campaign it was a committee of your club 
that was practically the first organization to 
meet me at Montauk Point, and to ask me 
to come to speak to you ; when I was in- 
augurated as Governor, a body of representa- 
tives of this club were present, and at that 
time you gave me an Abraham Lincoln ink- 
stand, which has stood on my desk ever 
since, and which is the one I use now; and 
I think it was this club which was practically 
the first organization to be so unwise as to 
formulate a desire to have me made Presi- 
dent — a fact which, whenever any representa- 
tive body from this club is in New York, I 
shall do all I can to conceal from the knowl- 
edge of Wall Street. 

205 



2o6 CORRUPTION 

I remember well that at the first dinner 
of this club which I attended I was brought 
around by that profound and learned law- 
yer, the late James Norton, and I remember 
that the following year he came on to New 
York to the dinner of the New England 
Society, I think it was, to speak on behalf 
of Chicago, and the toastmaster, in introduc- 
ing him, referred to the fact that Chicago was 
popularly regarded as having rather a good 
opinion of itself. And when Mr. Norton 
got up, he responded that really Chicago had 
never quite understood why it was not as 
well entitled to think well of itself as New 
York was to think well of London. 

It was at an address here at the Hamilton 
Club that I used the expression "strenuous 
life," an expression which from that day to this 
I have never more been able to use; and 
whenever I have come to you, whenever I have 
spoken either to this club or elsewhere in 
Chicago, I have always addressed myself to 
the instant needs of things; for it would not 
be worth your while to have me come, and it 
would not be worth my while to come, if I 
could not speak exactly as I thought upon 
the questions of the hour. I feel that when 
I am in Chicago I am in my own city; that 
I am in one of the centers of the expression 



CORRUPTION 207 

of the vital American spirit. Your problems 
are my problems, for your problems are the 
problems of the American people. 

Now, there are two chief sources of danger 
to the American people : lawless violence and 
corruption; lawless violence, which we most 
often have to face from among the people 
who have least of the world's goods; and 
corruption, which we most often have to face 
from among the people that have most of 
the world's goods. 

The last time I was in Chicago you were 
engaged in a struggle with the first evil. It 
was at the time of the great teamsters' 
strike, that you remember here, and there 
was some question of the city authorities not 
being able to deal with it. You were then 
face to face with an assault by lawless vio- 
lence upon the foundation of the American 
government. 

I was coming back from the Rocky Moun- 
tains at the time, and I had good friends 
who earnestly advised me to go around 
Chicago. I decided to go through it, and 
stopped here. A deputation of the labor 
men called upon me, and to them I said 
what I subsequently said at a dinner at 
which the then Mayor and the then Governor 
were present, that, vitally interested though 



2o8 CORRUPTION 

I was in all real reforms for the betterment 
of our people, and eagerly though I desired 
to help uplift those who were down, and so 
far as was possible do away with the in- 
equalities of fortune that come from the in- 
equalities of opportunity, yet when there was 
disorder, when there was lawless violence, 
all questions of reform had to be postponed 
until the orderly process of the law was 
resumed; and that, while I hoped and be- 
lieved that the municipal authorities them- 
selves would be able to deal with the dis- 
order, yet, if they found it impossible, back 
of the city stood the state, and back of the 
state the nation. 

I did not hesitate to speak directly then, 
and just as little shall I hesitate to speak 
directly now. 

In the program to-night you have done me 
the honor to print certain quotations from 
speeches I have made, mostly before the 
Hamilton Club; and the final quotation is: 
"We must see that there is civic honesty, 
civic cleanliness, civic good sense, in our 
whole administration of the city, state, and 
nation." 

My friends, the value of a sentence like 
that consists exclusively in the way in which 
we try to live up to it. The worth of what 



CORRUPTION 209 

I have to say to you, and whether or not it 
is worth your while to hsten to me, depends 
upon the way in which we translate words 
into deeds. It is all right to applaud a sen- 
tence like that in favor of civic honesty, 
stating that civic honesty is essential to the 
welfare of a nation. It is well enough to 
applaud it, but woe to you if you applaud 
the sentence in the abstract and fail to act 
up to it in the concrete. 

It has been well said that the progress, 
the true progress, of a people can best be 
gauged by their standard of moral conduct, 
by their judgment as to what conduct is 
moral and what conduct is immoral, and 
by the effectiveness with which they make 
their approbation of the moral and their 
disapprobation of the immoral felt. No re- 
public can last if corruption is allowed to 
eat into its public Hfe. No republic can last 
if the private citizens sit supinely by and 
either encourage or tolerate corruption among 
their representatives. 

Each state of the nation, each important 
city of the Union, has from time to time to 
face this question. More than once we 
have been brought face to face with it in the 
state of New York, You are face to face 
with it now in the state of Illinois. 



2IO CORRUPTION 

I have been reading the reports of the 
investigations by the two state's attorneys, 
which resulted in the indictment of four 
members of the legislature, and together 
with that I have read the reports of the con- 
fession of four other members of the legisla- 
ture. I was advised to-day by a very worthy 
friend not to talk on this matter, because it 
was a " delicate " subject, and he added that 
no one had been convicted. Now, I feel most 
strongly that we make the question of public 
honesty a sham if we limit the use of the 
word ** honesty" to mere law-honesty. 

There are big business men whom I have 
counted as among the most insidious enemies 
of the real welfare of this republic, although 
they have been so advised that it would be 
impossible to convict them, and there have 
been in the United States, including the state 
of New York, many public men whose careers 
have been a scandal throughout the country, 
although they keep clear of the courts. 

Read the confessions of the four men. 
Read what was developed by the two state's 
attorneys, one belonging to the one party 
and one belonging to the other, about the 
four men against whom they secured indict- 
ments, and about other men also. Read 
that, and I defy any honest man of intelligence 



CORRUPTION 211 

not to come to the conclusion that the legis- 
lature whose doings have been exposed was 
guilty of the foulest and basest corruption, 
and, therefore, of the most infamous treason 
to American institutions. 

Now, I am a good party man, but I 
am an American first. When we come to 
questions affecting the vital principles of 
American Hfe, I know no party. When 
such a question as corruption is involved, 
we cannot afford to divide on party lines. 

I take just this much account of party in 
such a case. While I will do my best to get 
hold of the thief of the opposite party, I will 
try, if possible, a little harder to get hold of 
the thief of my own party. 

When I was President I endeavored to 
act so that there should be no need of rais- 
ing the cry among my opponents of "Turn 
the rascals out," because I turned them out 
myself just as fast as I could get at them. 

Now, mind you, take my words as worth less 
than nothing, unless, in looking back, you 
can see that they were justified by my deeds. 

Examine what went on in the Post Ofl&ce 
Department, or anywhere else, when corrup- 
tion was alleged with anything like an offer 
of proof. 

Now, in making these investigations I 



212 CORRUPTION 

struck two different sets of cases. There was 
one set of cases where prosecutions would 
lie. In those cases I turned the matter over 
to the Department of Justice. In addition, 
there was the larger class of cases where 
there was not sufficient ground for prosecu- 
tion, but where it was evident that the man 
was an unfit and an improper public servant; 
and there I turned him out; and when now 
and then the man back of him, occasionally 
belonging to a coordinate branch of the 
government, would come up and say: "Oh, 
there is no conviction against him," I said, 
"No, I dare say that he has practiced law- 
honesty, but he is a crook, and out he goes.'* 
Now, I could do that with the appointive 
officers, who held office under me; with the 
elective officers there is but one body that 
can do that, and that is the people. It de- 
pends upon you, upon the people of America, 
whether you will permit a man to represent 
you because he has been acquitted in a 
court of law, or because there has been a 
mistrial, so that enough jurors have believed 
in him to get him off, — whether you will per- 
mit that man to represent you, or whether 
you will take the stand that where you have 
evidence of a kind which may not be legal, 
but which convinces every honest man of 



CORRUPTION 213 

intelligence, you will not submit to the pol- 
lution of American life by putting such a man 
in high official position. 

Now, in each nation, in every form of gov- 
ernment, there are base flatterers. The same 
individual who in a monarchy would be a 
courtier and flatter the king, in a republic 
turns demagogue and flatters those whom he 
thinks will cast the most votes. They are of 
just the same type. The one is just as bad 
as the other; the only difi^erence is that they 
are functioning under different conditions. It 
is a favorite — I won't say argument — but a 
favorite assertion of men of that type when 
some public servant has been found guilty of 
conduct that should disgrace him to say, "We 
will go to the people for his vindication; we 
will see if we can't secure him an election." 
Sometimes they succeed. A great many 
thoroughly good people, thoroughly good 
citizens, have no special means of informa- 
tion, are ignorant of what really has hap- 
pened, and may on occasions like that be 
misled; but if they are misled, and if they do, 
so far as in them lies, attempt to vindicate 
a dishonest and unfaithful public servant by 
electing him, they don't vindicate him, they 
merely disgrace themselves and us. 

I call the attention of the people who 



214 CORRUPTION 

make that argument to this fact: We pro- 
duced in New York once an arch scoundrel 
whose fame became international, — Boss 
Tweed, — and after Tweed was convicted he 
was elected to the state senate as a '"' vindica- 
tion." Has that made any difference in the 
judgment passed upon Tweed's honesty by 
history ? Not a bit, but it shed an unfortu- 
nate light upon the standards of some of the 
citizens of New York at that time. They 
did not help Tweed. They did not help his 
reputation. They hurt themselves, and they 
hurt the entire American body politic, for 
none of us can commit such a folly without 
having the effect felt both by ourselves and 
by others. 

If because a postmaster who had been 
guilty of crooked transactions could not 
have been convicted in a court of law I had 
permitted him to continue in office, I would 
not have made that man's character good; 
I would merely have shown that mine was 
bad; and the same thing applies to the body 
politic. 

In other forms of government than ours 
there may be a certain kind of progress even 
if the average man is not what he should be; 
but in our government, in a great democ- 
racy like ours, the stream cannot rise higher 



CORRUPTION 215 

than its source. You cannot have honesty 
in public life unless the average citizen de- 
mands honesty in public life. 

If the people of America are content to 
send to represent them in the state or the 
national legislature men who they know in 
their heart of hearts have not obtained their 
offices honestly, but have obtained their 
offices dishonestly and by corruption, who 
they know have practiced corruption in pub- 
lic life, they may make up their minds that 
they will get the government to which they 
are entitled, and a bad government it will be. 

Now, my friends, I do not suppose that if 
we decline to be honest and to insist on 
honesty in public life for our own sakes, 
we can be expected to do so for the sake of 
others; and yet, in addition to making the 
appeal for honesty to you and to the citizens 
of Illinois, for the sake of Illinois, and for 
the sake of America, I make the appeal also 
for the sake of the world. 

Last spring, in Europe, there were two 
things that struck me especially as I talked 
with the average man. The first was that 
the man looked toward America as the land 
of golden hope, as the land of a partially 
realized ideal, as a land where it was really 
being shown that the people could govern 



2i6 CORRUPTION 

themselves justly and righteously and in their 
own interest. 

And the second thing was that that faith 
in America was continually being shaken by 
stories that reached them of corruption in 
American business and in American public 
life. Every act of corruption here, every 
gross scandal, every bit of flagrant dishonesty 
in big business or in politics, or in connec- 
tion with the complex web that weaves 
together strands of big business and strands 
of politics — every such instance, when car- 
ried abroad, brings sneering satisfaction to 
the heart of every reactionary, who is glad 
to say: "Yes, that is what comes of democ- 
racy. That is what you get when the people 
try to govern themselves. It shows that they 
cannot govern themselves." And every such 
instance dims the hope of the poor and the 
oppressed who strive to believe and haltingly 
do believe that here, somehow or other, we 
have arranged a condition of things in which 
the injustices of the world elsewhere are at 
least partially remedied. 

My friends, I ask you men of Illinois that 
you purify your politics, that you hold ac- 
countable the scoundrel, great or small, who 
has been guilty of corruption, that you insist 
on cleanliness in your public life; and I ask 



CORRUPTION 217 

it in your name and for your sakes; I ask 
it for the sake of the American people; and 
I ask it for the sake of all the nations of the 
world, that their hope may not be made dim, 
and that they may continue to cherish the 
ideal of the possibility of having a govern- 
ment of, by, and for the people, that shall 
mean also a government of justice and a 
government of honesty. 



LAW, ORDER, AND JUSTICE 

SPEECH AT COLUMBUS 

lo September, 1910 

Ever since I have been in Ohio I have been 
hearing of the lamentable conditions here 
in Columbus due to the street railway strike.^ 
Both sides have written to me stating the 
case as they saw it, and each side urged me 
to come. While I freely say that I did not 
like to come, I Hke still less to dodge. 

As I had started to say,^ I find that my 
speech was put down as being a speech upon 
law and order. I have asked that it be 
changed — that it be put down as a speech 
upon law, order, and justice. 

The first essential to the achievement of 
justice is that law and order shall obtain, 

^ At the date of this speech there had been a strike ; 
for months there had been violence, many policemen 
had refused to do their duty, and many other officials 
had failed to do theirs. — E. H. A. 

^ This speech was begun in the midst of such con- 
fusion that the opening sentences were not generally 
heard and could not be recorded. — E. H. A. 

218 



LAW, ORDER, AND JUSTICE 219 

that violence shall be repressed, that the 
orderly course of law shall be unobstructed, 
and that those who commit violence shall be 
sternly punished. But while this is the first 
vital essential towards the achievement of jus- 
tice, it is of value primarily as leading up to 
justice. After law and order have been ob- 
tained, — not before, after, — then comes the 
question of seeing that absolute justice is 
done. 

I am not competent to speak as to the exact 
facts, or in detail, of your trouble here. I 
have received from reputable men conflicting 
allegations as to what has occurred; so that 
all I can do is to set forth certain general 
principles which apply here as they apply in 
all similar cases. 

In the first place, there must be obedience 
to the law; there must be a cessation of 
violence and bad conduct. It is admitted by 
almost every one that there have been re- 
peated and brutal acts of violence, ranging 
from actual assault to bomb-throwing, and, 
finally, to the use of that weapon of the mean- 
est, the basest, and the most cowardly type 
of assassin — dynamite. There is not much 
to choose among assassins; but the assassin 
who tries to kill a man, or men, with dyna- 
mite and himself escape all personal risk 



220 LAW, ORDER, AND JUSTICE 

occupies an evil eminence on the table-land of 
infamy. Now, the first requisite is to estab- 
lish order; and the first duty of every official, 
in state and city alike, high and low, is to see 
that order obtains and that violence is 
definitely stopped. One of the things of 
which I am proud is my connection with the 
New York police force. I have the greatest 
regard for the policeman who does his duty. 
I put him high among the props of the state ; 
but the policeman who mutinies, or refuses 
to perform his duty, stands on a level lower 
than that of the professional lawbreaker.* 
Such a policeman ranks with the soldier 
who mutinies in the face of the enemy, and 
should be consigned to the same pit of obliv- 
ion. I ask, then, not only that civic officials 
perform their duties, but that you, the people, 
insist upon their performing them. You are 
not to be excused if you fail to demand that 
your representatives perform the first duty 
of civilized people by seeing that violence is 
stopped and that the laws are obeyed. 

I ask this particularly of the wage workers, 
and employees, and men on strike. It is 
to the interest of everybody that law and 

^ Several of the policemen who were on duty about 
the stand joined with special heartiness in the applause 
that followed this sentence. — E. H. A. 



LAW, ORDER, AND JUSTICE 221 

order shall prevail; but it is specially to their 
interest because the question of the rights 
and wrongs of the controversy cannot be 
settled as they should be settled until there 
is order, until the law is observed. I ask 
them, not merely passively, but actively, 
to help in restoring order. I ask them to 
clear their skirts of all suspicion of sympathiz- 
ing with disorder, and, above all, the sus- 
picion of sympathizing with those who com- 
mit brutal and cowardly assaults. 

If it be true — I don't know whether it is 
true or not — but if it is, as alleged to me — 
if it be true that the attorneys of the strikers 
habitually appear for every miscreant who 
is arrested for assaulting cars, for assaulting 
other people, and furnish them bail bonds, 
then, in their own interest and for their good 
name, let the wage workers get rid of the 
attorneys. Let them get rid of the attorney 
who by such action inevitably tends to cast a 
doubt upon the sincerity of the expressions 
of the men who disclaim sympathy with those 
outrages. 

And, now, what I have said of the labor- 
ing men applies just as much to the cap- 
italists and the capitalists' representatives. 
A year ago. Judge Sater sat in southern 
Ohio on a case brought before him affecting 



222 LAW, ORDER, AND JUSTICE 

the striking miners. An injunction was 
asked for against the miners. He dedined 
to give it, and read to both parties from 
the bench a lecture to which, for their good 
fortune, they paid heed. He told the miners 
that their worst foes were among themselves, 
among those members and sympathizers who 
committed acts of violence ; and he told the 
employers that if they, by their hired men 
and representatives, committed acts of vio- 
lence, they, in their turn, occupied the same 
disgraceful position that their opponents oc- 
cupied; that the law was the same for both, 
and justice and good conduct were demanded 
alike of each party to the controversy. 

In all great labor struggles, not only are the 
capitalists and the employees parties in inter- 
est, but there is another party, and that third 
party is the people as a whole. You here 
are the party in interest, and peculiarly so 
in a controversy like the present, where a 
public service corporation is involved which 
has a peculiar and special connection with the 
government and with the people. 

Now, then, your first duty is, as I have said, 
to see that law and order obtain. It is the 
duty of your representatives in public life 
to demand it of the lawbreaker, not as a 
favor, but as a right, which you will punish 



LAW, ORDER, AND JUSTICE 223 

him for failing to fulfill; and it is to the in- 
terest of all of you to demand it, but, most of 
all, it is to the interest of the wage workers. 
But your duty does not stop there. It has 
only just begun. There can be no justice 
without law and order; but law and order 
are well-nigh valueless unless used as a founda- 
tion upon which justice is built up as a super- 
structure. 

As I have said to you, conflicting state- 
ments have been made to me as to the 
original cause of the trouble. It has been 
alleged to me by reputable men that originally 
the trouble began because of the discharge 
of certain men who asked for an increase in 
wages. It has been alleged to me that the 
struggle has been continued because of the 
open or covert determination of the employ- 
ers not to permit a union to exist among 
their employees. Both allegations have been 
denied, and I have no facts before me which 
enable me to decide whether or not they are 
correct. 

As to the first allegation, it would be an 
act so infamous to discharge a man because 
he asked for an increase in wages, that I can 
hardly believe it can have occurred. But 
it would be almost as bad to discharge a man 
because he belonged to, or was preparing to 



224 LAW, ORDER, AND JUSTICE 

enter, or organize, a union. I am an hon- 
orary member of a union myself. If I were 
a wage worker, I should certainly join a union; 
but when I was in I would remember that I 
was first of all an American citizen. Uncle 
Sam comes on top in everything. I would 
certainly join a union. In our modern in- 
dustrial system the union is just as necessary 
as the corporation, and in the modern field 
of industrialism it is often an absolute neces- 
sity that there should be collective bargain- 
ing by the employees with the employers; 
and such collective bargaining is but one of 
the many benefits conferred by wisely and 
honestly organized unions that act properly. 
Of course, it is outrageous to force a man to 
join a union, just as it is outrageous to take 
part in, or encourage, the so-called secondary 
boycott; but it is no less an outrage to dis- 
criminate against him because he wishes to 
have a union, or to refuse to deal with a 
union when organized. The union has the 
same right to exist that the corporation has, 
and it is as unfair to refuse to deal with it as 
it is to refuse to deal with the corporation. 
Show your willingness to give the union its 
full rights, and you will be stronger when 
you set your faces like flint, as I have set 
mine, against the union when it is wrong. So 



LAW, ORDER, AND JUSTICE 225 

that as soon as law and order have been ob- 
tained, it becomes your duty, you, the people, 
through your municipal or through your state 
authorities, to insist upon a thorough inves- 
tigation by competent and disinterested au- 
thorities who will put before us an authori- 
tative statement of the rights and wrongs of 
both sides; and then demand a thoroughgoing 
remedy for any wrong. 

A case like this should be always a matter 
for mediation or arbitration. If such is re- 
fused by either party, shape your laws so that 
mediation and arbitration can be secured. 
If you need to have a constitutional amend- 
ment for your purpose, amend the constitu- 
tion; but don't wait for the amendment to 
see substantial justice done in this case. See 
to it. 

I have got but two minutes more. I have 
not spoken long; but you will admit I have 
spoken to the point. See to it that you 
find out the facts and find out what the cor- 
poration has done. If it has acted properly, 
decide in its favor; if it has not, decide against 
it. If there has been injustice done, see that 
the injustice is remedied. See that the public 
service corporation acts for the service of 
the people. If the municipal and the state 
authorities mean business they can make the 

Q 



226 LAW, ORDER, AND JUSTICE 

corporation do what is right. See that the 
evil is remedied, and that you are guaranteed 
against a repetition of the evil. In short, 
my friends, I can sum it up in this way : You, 
the people here, have two duties in this crisis. 
You have to face the need of exercising two 
prime duties of American citizenship — in- 
sistence upon law and order, and the use of 
that insistence as a stepping-stone for obtain- 
ing justice. Law and order first. 

To-morrow is Sunday; to-morrow is a 
time when you may be threatened with dis- 
order. The wage workers and the repre- 
sentatives of the companies should make it 
evident that they wish the law absolutely 
obeyed ; that there is no chance of saying that 
either the labor organizations or the corpora- 
tion favors lawbreakers or lawbreaking. But 
let your public servants trust, not in the good 
will of either side, but to the might of the civil 
arm, and see that law rules, that order obtains, 
and that every miscreant, every scoundrel 
who seeks brutally to assault any other man 
— whatever that other man's status — is 
punished with the utmost severity. Keep 
order now. Frown on disorder and violence 
now, and put them down with ruthless sever- 
ity; and then, friends, when you have obtained 
law and order, remember that it is useless to 



LAW, ORDER, AND JUSTICE 227 

have obtained them unless upon them you 
build a superstructure of justice. After finding 
out the facts, see that justice is done; see 
that injustice that has been perpetrated in 
the past is remedied, and see that the chance 
of doing injustice in the future is minimized. 
Take these two positions, and you will have 
deserved well, not only of the city of Colum- 
bus, not only of the state ot Ohio, but of 
the people of the great republic in which 
we are living and in whose citizenship we 
exult without measure. 



PART IV 

THE NEW NATIONALISM AND 
THE OLD MORALITIES 



THE NEW NATIONALISM AND THE 
OLD MORALITIES 

SPEECH AT SYRACUSE 

17 September, 1910 

Criticism has been made of certain of 
my speeches in the West where I advocated 
what has been called the "New Nationalism/' 
But the New Nationalism really means 
nothing but an application to new conditions 
of certain old and fundamental moralities. 
It means an invitation to meet the new 
problems of the present day in precisely the 
spirit in which Lincoln and the men of his 
day met their new problems. In my western 
speeches I said chiefly what I again and 
again said in messages to Congress when I 
was President. I very slightly developed 
the doctrines contained in these presidential 
addresses in order to meet the development 
of the new conditions; and the chief way in 
which I developed them was to include a 
quotation from Abraham Lincoln and con- 
strue it in connection with the very old 
doctrine of eminent domain. 

Now what I say in the West I of course 
say here. Whether it is sound or not can, I 

231 



232 THE NEW NATIONALISM 

think, be determined by the simple expedient 
of asking whether any party is wilHng frankly 
to take the other side of the propositions of 
which complaint is made. If so, it would 
be a good thing to have the issue made in 
clean-cut fashion before the people; for in the 
end the people would most certainly decide 
in favor of the principles embodied in the 
New Nationalism, because otherwise this 
country could not continue to be a true 
republic, a true democracy. 

Take, for instance, what I said in reference 
to two decisions of the Supreme Court. It 
was in the course of an address in which I 
dwelt upon the great need of having the 
spheres of activity of the national and state 
governments extended to cover the whole 
field of our life that can properly be touched 
by legislation at all, so that there shall not 
be left a debatable land in which neither 
nation nor state has real power, and which 
can serve as a place of refuge for men who 
wish to escape all effective control under the 
law, and especially for the great corporations 
which wish thus to escape control. One 
decision was in the Knight Sugar case, in 
which, according to the dissenting opinion 
of Justice Harlan, the judgment of the court 
placed the public "so far as national power 



AND THE OLD MORALITIES 233 

is concerned [the only power which could be 
effective] entirely at the mercy of combina- 
tions which arbitrarily control the prices of 
articles purchased to be transported from one 
state to another state." I merely took the 
view which the learned justice had thus 
taken in his dissenting opinion. It is, in 
my judgment, unquestionably the correct 
view. The decision has been a bar in the 
path of those who are honestly endeavoring to 
secure adequate control over great corpora- 
tions doing an interstate business. Those 
who criticize me are also criticizing a justice 
of the Supreme Court, Mr. Harlan. Do my 
critics take the position that the people shall 
not be able to control the management and 
activities of these great monopolistic cor- 
porations doing an interstate business .? If 
so, let them frankly avow their position. If 
not, let them cease their criticism. 

The second decision was one against 
state's rights, prohibiting the state of New 
York to regulate in very moderate fashion the 
hours of work in bakery and confectionery 
estabhshments where the conditions are such 
that excessive hours of labor continued day 
in and day out may endanger the health and 
shorten the lives of the workingmen. Here 
what I said was based upon the dissenting 



234 THE NEW NATIONALISM 

opinions of Justices Harlan, White, Day, and 
Holmes, who specifically upheld the view 
that the state had the power to regulate the 
hours of labor under such conditions, taking 
the broad ground that "it is the primary 
duty of the state to guard and protect the 
health and safety of its people." Here I 
held that the dissenting justices were right 
in their views, and that, however honest 
men may be who revive the long outworn 
doctrine that the state shall not interfere 
with the "liberty" of laborers who are driven 
by grinding need to contract to work for an 
excessive number of hours under unhealthy 
conditions, yet such doctrine is essentially 
anti-social, and is really a relic of a past 
geological age in our social and economic 
history. If my opponents disagree with me, 
let them frankly say that the state has no 
right to limit the hours of labor of men em- 
ployed under conditions dangerous to their 
health and welfare. If they do so, I take 
issue with them. If they do not, then they 
have no right to criticize what I have said. 

Fifty-three years ago Abraham Lincoln 
was assailed for his repeated criticisms of 
the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case. 
As regards this decision he announced, not 
once, but again and again, that he held it to 



AND THE OLD MORALITIES 235 

be not merely the right but the duty of citi- 
zens, who felt that judicial decisions were 
erroneous and damaging, loyally to abide 
by the decisions as long as they stood, but to 
try hard to secure their reversal; his language 
on one occasion being as follows : — 

"We do not propose in any violent way [to] 
disturb the rights of property thus settled. 
. . . We propose so resisting it [the decision] 
as to have it reversed if we can, and a new 
judicial rule estabUshed upon this subject." 

He repeated this statement in sHghtly 
differing language in speech after speech. 

Moreover, he used very strong language 
about the decision, far stronger than I should 
dream of using, or than it would be proper to 
use, about the decisions with which I now deal. 
But his view as to his right and duty to call 
attention to an erroneous decision which 
vitally affected the rights of the people was, 
I think, entirely sound. At any rate, if I 
have erred in commenting as I have com- 
mented upon the decisions in question, I err 
in company with Abraham Lincoln. 

The criticism of me is perhaps well sunimed 
up in the following speech of an eminent 
public man : — 

"He makes war on the decision of the 
Supreme Court. I wish to say to you, 



236 THE NEW NATIONALISM 

fellow citizens, that I have no war to make on 
that decision, or any other ever rendered by 
the Supreme Court. I am content to take 
that decision as it stands delivered by the 
highest judicial tribunal on earth, a tribunal 
established by the Constitution of the United 
States for that purpose, and hence that deci- 
sion becomes the law of the land, binding on 
you, on me, and on every other good citizen, 
whether we like it or not. Hence, I do not 
choose to go into an argument to prove, 
before this audience, whether or not he [the 
Chief Justice] understood the law better than 
Theodore Roosevelt." 

Now, gentlemen, I have made one change 
in the above quotation. The last words 
were not "Theodore Roosevelt," the last 
words were "Abraham Lincoln," and this 
attack, made nearly fifty-three years ago upon 
Abraham Lincoln, is precisely and exactly 
the kind of attack made upon me at the 
moment. Abraham Lincoln felt and pro- 
fessed, throughout his life, the same profound 
respect for the Supreme Court that, of course, 
I feel, and that I have again and again in 
public speech and messages, as President of 
the United States, expressed. An upright 
judge is a higher and better public servant 



AND THE OLD MORALITIES 237 

than any other man can possibly be, and it is 
a cause of pride to every American citizen 
that our Supreme Court is the most influen- 
tial judicial tribunal in the entire world. I 
have quoted Abraham Lincoln; let me quote 
him again: "We beheve in obedience to and 
respect for the judicial department of govern- 
ment. We think its decisions on constitu- 
tional questions when fully settled should 
control." I agree absolutely with this sen- 
tence of Abraham Lincoln, not the less 
because I also beheve in what Lincoln said 
immediately afterwards: "But we think 
this decision erroneous, and we shall do what 
we can to have it overruled." 

Nor do I have to go only to the statesmen 
of the past for precedents. The President 
of the United States, Mr. Taft, has served 
his country honorably and uprightly in many 
positions, — as judge, as Governor of the 
PhiHppines, as Secretary of War, and now 
as President, — for to him and the Congress 
acting with him, we owe the creation of a 
Tariff Commission, the adoption of maxi- 
mum and minimum tariff law treaties with 
foreign powers, the proper treatment of the 
PhiHppines under the tariff, the increase in 
the efficiency of the Interstate Cornmerce 
Law, the beginning of a national legislative 



238 THE NEW NATIONALISM 

program providing for the exercise of the 
taxing power in connection with corpora- 
tions doing an interstate business, a Postal 
Savings Bank Bill, the constitution of a com- 
mission to report a remedy for overcapitali- 
zation in connection with the issue of stocks 
and bonds; but few of his services are more 
deserving of record than what he said in 
this very matter of criticism of the judiciary. 
Speaking as a United States circuit judge, 
fifteen years ago, he said: "The opportunity 
freely and publicly to criticize judicial action 
is of vastly more importance to the body 
politic than the immunity of courts and 
judges from unjust aspersions and attack. 
Nothing tends more to render judges careful 
in their decisions and anxiously solicitous 
to do exact justice than the consciousness 
that every act of theirs is to be submitted to 
the intelligent scrutiny and candid criticism 
of their fellow men. In the case of judges 
having a life tenure, indeed, their very inde- 
pendence makes the right freely to comment 
on their decisions of greater importance, 
because it is the only practicable and avail- 
able instrument in the hands of a free people 
to keep such judges alive to the reasonable 
demands of those they serve." 
We who work for the New Nationalism 



AND THE OLD MORALITIES 239 

are not working in any spirit of mere faction 
or party. We recognize parties as necessary 
instruments for government under popular 
conditions, just as we recognize corporations 
as necessary instruments in modern business, 
and just as we recognize unions as necessary 
instruments in the elevation of wage work- 
ers under modern industrial conditions. But 
we believe that true loyalty to a party consists 
chiefly in making that party the efficient 
servant of the whole people. 

Among those who manage our government, 
state and national, in legislative and in judicial 
positions, we regard the one vital and essen- 
tial matter to be honesty. The crook in pub- 
He Hfe is the gravest menace to our political 
institutions, and we call on all good citizens 
to drive him out of pubHc life. Whether 
his crookedness takes the form of blackmail 
or of bribery — we care nothing whether 
he receive the bribe or give it — is of small 
consequence. In any event he is a traitor 
to democracy and a foe to repubUcan insti- 
tutions; and against him we war without 
mercy; and we will reject without hesitation 
any plea advanced on his behalf,^ no matter 
what may be the influence, political, social, 
or commercial, that stands behind him. 

We beUeve in the hearty encouragement 



240 THE NEW NATIONALISM 

and reward of individual excellence, but we 
believe also in steadily using the power of the 
government to secure economic democracy 
as well as political democracy. Our ideal is 
to secure, so far as by law it is possible to 
secure, a reasonable approximation to equal- 
ity of opportunity for all men, so that (as 
far as it is humanly possible to secure it) 
each man shall have the chance to start fair 
in the race of life and to show the stuff that 
is in him, unhelped by special privilege for 
himself and unhampered by special privilege 
for others. We know that an ideal like this 
can never be entirely realized, but we believe 
it our duty to do whatever is possible to bring 
about a measurable approximation to this 
ideal. We entirely understand that after the 
best possible laws have been obtained, and 
after they have been enforced in the most 
efficient possible manner, it will yet remain 
true that the chief factor in each man's suc- 
cess or failure must be that man's individual 
character; but while fully recognizing this 
fact, we nevertheless insist that good laws 
and honest administration of these laws can 
be made to play a very real and effective part 
in the betterment of mankind. According 
to our ability we intend to safeguard the rights 
of the mighty; but we intend no less jeal- 



AND THE OLD MORALITIES 241 

ously to safeguard the rights of the lowly. 
Our ideal is equal justice for all; justice alike 
for the rich man and the poor man who do 
right; and the same stern justice for the 
rich man and the poor man who do wrong. 

We cordially believe in the rights of prop- 
erty. We think that normally and in the 
long run the rights of humanity, the rights of 
mankind, coincide with the rights of property, 
and that the two sets of rights are in large 
part inextricably interwoven; and so we 
would protect property in all its rights. But 
we feel that if in exceptional cases there is 
any conflict between the rights of property 
and the rights of man, then we must stand 
for the rights of man. And we believe that 
where property has accumulated in such 
masses that it becomes heaped-up wealth, 
fairly fabulous in its extent and power, then 
there arises a real reason not merely for 
safeguarding the rights of wealth but for safe- 
guarding the people against the wrongs and 
abuses of wealth, and especially of wealth 
in its corporate capacity, of wealth function- 
ing as corporate capital. The great captains 
of industry do well and are entitled to great 
rewards only in so far as they render great 
service; they are invaluable as long as they 
in good faith act as efficient servants of the 



242 THE NEW NATIONALISM 

public; they become intolerable when they 
behave as the masters of the public. The 
corporation is the creature of the people ; and 
it must not be allowed to become the ruler 
of the people. 

Politically we believe that the people should 
act with justice and moderation, and that it 
is eminently necessary that they should show 
self-control. But] we also believe that this 
should be literally self-control and not control 
by outsiders; that they should be controlled 
by themselves and not by political bosses, 
or by the direct or indirect use of wealth, and 
least of all by a combination between political 
bossism and big business. People are apt 
to say that bossism is merely another term 
for leadership. I do not think that this is 
so. Of course there are all degrees in boss- 
ism; and of course the mere fact that a 
man is a boss does not in the least justify 
the kind of attack upon him that ought to be 
made upon a corrupt and unfaithful public 
servant. Nevertheless, we think that the 
boss is a bad development in our politics. It 
is necessary and desirable that there should 
be leaders, but it is unnecessary and unde- 
sirable that there should be bosses. The 
leader leads the people; the boss drives the 
people. The leader gets his hold by open 



AND THE OLD MORALITIES 243 

appeal to the reason and conscience of his 
followers; the boss keeps his hold by manipu- 
lation, by intrigue, by secret ^ and furtive 
appeals to many forms of self-interest, and 
sometimes to very base forms of self-interest. 
The leader wars on the crook and seeks to 
drive him from power; the boss too often 
protects the crook and seeks to profit by his 
existence. The leader treats the unfaithful 
public servant as the worst foe of the party 
to which he nominally belongs, and refuses 
entirely to recognize him as a party represent- 
ative; the boss too often uses and shields 
him. Leadership is carried on in the open 
light of day ; bossism derives its main strength 
from what is done under cover of darkness. 

Of course leadership must not only be 
brave and honest, but it must be sober and 
must accord with the dictates of common 
sense. Exactly as the conservative who 
favors abuses and connives at corruption is 
in reality the worst enemy of conservatism, so 
the popular leader or reformer who acts in 
the spirit of the demagogue, or of the wild- 
eyed visionary, who incites to excess and to 
rash action and stirs up class hatred, is him- 
self the worst foe of progress, the most dan- 
gerous enemy of the popular cause which 
he professes to champion. There must be 



244 THE NEW NATIONALISM 

progress; a great democracy which ceases 
to be progressive soon also ceases to be either 
great or democratic; but the progress must 
be wise, sober, moderate, if it is to be perma- 
nent. If we attempt merely to stand still, 
we are certain to go backward. If under 
the theory that we are making progress we 
go in the wrong direction, we shall have to 
waste much time in retracing our steps. 
But progress there must and shall be. The 
past century has been one of gigantic material 
prosperity, of gigantic accumulation of pros- 
perity. Our task is to preserve that pros- 
perity, in the interest of all of us; but it is 
also in the interest of all of us to work for a 
less unequal division of the prosperity. We 
believe in material well-being as absolutely 
essential. It is only upon a foundation of 
material well-being that the greatness of a 
nation can be built. But the foundation 
is in no way sufficient in itself. Material 
well-being is a great good, but it is a great 
good chiefly as a means for the upbuilding 
upon it of a high and fine type of character, 
private and public. Upon our national well- 
being as a foundation we must upbuild 
the structure of a lofty national life, raised 
in accordance with the doctrine that " right- 
eousness exalteth a nation." 



CRITICISM OF THE COURTS 

SIGNED EDITORIAL IN THE OUTLOOK FOR 
24 SEPTEMBER, IQIO 

On August 29, at Denver, before the Col- 
orado Legislature, I made an address dwell- 
ing partly upon the necessity of good gov- 
ernment, and specifically upon the need of 
more coherent work between the state and 
the national governments, and of action 
on the part of the legislative, executive, and 
judicial officers of the country, both national 
and state, which would prevent the growth 
and extension of a neutral territory or border- 
land of ill-defined limits in which neither the 
nation nor any state should be able to exer- 
cise eiFective control, especially over big cor- 
porations, in their relations to the public 
at large and to their own employees. I spoke 
in part as follows : — 

The courts occupy a position of importance in our 
government such as they occupy in no other government, 
because, instead of dealing only with the rights of one 
man face to face with his fellow-men, as is the case with 
other governments, they here pass upon the fundamental 
governmental rights of the people as exercised through 

245 



246 CRITICISM OF THE COURTS 

their legislative and executive officers. Unfortunately, 
the courts, instead of leading in the recognition of the 
new conditions, have lagged behind, and, as each case 
has presented itself, have tended by a series of negative 
decisions to create a sphere in which neither nation nor 
state has effective control, and where the great business 
interests that can call to their aid the ability of the 
greatest corporation lawyers escape all control whatso- 
ever. Let me illustrate what I mean by a reference to 
two concrete cases. Remember that I believe in states* 
rights wherever states' rights mean the people's rights. 
On the other hand, I believe in national rights wherever 
national rights mean the people's rights; and, above all, 
I believe that in every part of our complicated social 
fabric there must be either national or state control, and 
that it is ruinous to permit governmental action, and 
especially judicial action, which prevents the exercise of 
such control. 

The first case to which I shall refer is the Knight 
Sugar Trust case. In that case the Supreme Court of 
the United States handed down a decision which rendered 
it exceedingly difficult for the people to devise any 
method of controlling and regulating the business use of 
great capital in interstate commerce. It was a decision 
nominally against national rights, but really against popu- 
lar rights, against the democratic principle of government 
by the people. 

The second case is the so-called New York Bakeshop 
case. In New York City, as in most large cities, the 
baking business is likely to be carried on under unhygienic 
conditions, conditions which [tell against the welfare of 
the general public. The New York Legislature passed, 
and the New York Governor signed, a bill remedying 
these unhealthy conditions. New York State was the 
only body which could deal with them; the nation had 



CRITICISM OF THE COURTS 247 

no power whatever in the matter. Acting on evidence 
which to them seemed ample and sufficient, acting in the 
interest of the public and in accordance with the demand 
of the public, the only governmental authority having 
affirmative power in the matter, the Governor and the 
Legislature of the State of New York took the action 
which they deemed necessary, after what inquiry and study 
were needed to satisfy them as to the conditions, and as to 
the remedy. The Governor and the Legislature alone 
had the power to remedy the abuse. But the Supreme 
Court of the United States possessed, and unfortunately 
exercised, the negative power of not permitting the abuse 
to be remedied. By a five-to-four vote they declared the 
action of the State of New York unconstitutional, because, 
forsooth, men must not be deprived of their "liberty" 
to work under unhealthy conditions. 

All who are acquainted with the effort to remedy in- 
dustrial abuses know the t pe of mind (it may be per- 
fectly honest, but is absolutely fossilized), which declines 
to allow us to work for the betterment of conditions among 
the wage earners on the ground that we must not interfere 
with the "liberty" of a girl to work under conditions which 
jeopardize life and limb, or the "Hberty " of a man to work 
under conditions which ruin his health after a limited 
number of years. 

Such was the decision. The Court was of course abso- 
lutely powerless to make the remotest attempt to provide 
a remedy for the wrong which undoubtedly existed, and 
its refusal to permit action by the state did not confer 
any power upon the nation to act. The decision was 
nominally against states' rights, but really against pop- 
ular rights. 

Much exception was taken in the East to 
this speech as an "attack" on the Supreme 



248 CRITICISM OF THE COURTS 

Court, some of the critics going so far as to 
call it an attack upon the judiciary as a whole, 
an incitement to riot, and an appeal to the 
passions of the mob. The gloom caused by 
the "attack'' was naturally deepest in that 
section of the metropolitan press which is 
owned and edited in the shadow of Wall 
Street; but many good and honest people 
were misled into a feeling of uneasiness on 
the subject. 

The address was not delivered before a 
mob, or indeed at a popular meeting. It 
was made by invitation to the two houses 
of the Colorado Legislature assembled at 
the capitol of the state. In addition to 
the members of the Legislature there were 
present the Governor and various other 
state officers and various judges. There 
were some hundreds of spectators who had 
come by special invitation. The Speaker 
and Lieutenant-Governor presided, and the 
function was peculiarly dignified in character. 

So much for the setting of the speech. 
Now for the substance. Apart from simple 
misrepresentation or misquotation, my critics, 
as far as I can gather, take the view, first, 
that I have taken an action without precedent 
in questioning any decision of the Supreme 
Court; second, that I have used too strong 



CRITICISM OF THE COURTS 249 

language; and, third, that it is wrong ever 
to criticize a decision of the Supreme Court. 
I differ with them on all three points, and shall 
consider them consecutively. 

First, the question of precedent. The cen- 
tral feature of Abraham Lincoln's famous 
series of debates with Douglas was his attack 
on the Supreme Court for its decision in the 
Dred Scott case and Douglas's criticism of 
him for making such an attack. Douglas 
spoke of him as follows : — 

He makes war on the decision of the Supreme Court. 
... I wish to say to you, fellow citizens, that I have no 
war to make on that decision, or any other ever rendered 
by the Supreme Court. I am content to take that decision 
as it stands delivered by the highest judicial tribunal on 
earth, a tribunal established by the Constitution of the 
United States for that purpose, and hence that decision 
becomes the law of the land, binding on you, on me, and 
on every other good citizen, whether we like it or not. 
Hence I do not choose to go into an argument to prove, 
before this audience, whether or not he [the Chief Justice] 
understood the law better than Abraham Lincoln. 

If for Abraham Lincoln's name mine were 
substituted, this paragraph would stand with 
hardly an alteration as an exact summary of 
the attacks made upon me at this moment 
for what I said about the Court in the two 
cases under consideration. Lincoln himself 
during the debates, not once in the heat of 



250 CRITICISM OF THE COURTS 

fury, but again and again, in speech after 
speech, from June, 1857, to October, 1858, 
stated what I hold to be not merely a proper 
view, but the only proper view, of the duty of 
the citizen when the Supreme Court has made 
decisions which he firmly believes to be against 
the interests of the country. The following 
are a few quotations from his speeches : — 

We believe ... in obedience to, and respect for, the 
Judicial department of Government. We think its deci- 
sions on constitutional questions, when fully settled, should 
control not only the particular cases decided, but the gen- 
eral policy of the country. . . . But we think [this] 
decision erroneous. We know the court that made it has 
often overruled its own decisions, and we shall do what we 
can to have it overrule this. We offer no resistance to it. 

Judicial decisions are of greater or less authority 
as precedents according to circumstances. That this 
should be so accords both with common sense and the 
customary understanding of the legal profession. 

I now repeat my opposition to the decision. ... I 
do not resist it. . . . We . . . abide by the decision, 
but we will try to reverse that decision. 

I think that in respect for judicial authority, my 
humble history would not suffer in comparison with that 
of Judge Douglas. He would have the citizen conform 
his vote to that decision; the Member of Congress, 
his; the President, his use of the veto power. He would 
make it a rule of political action for the people and all 
the departments of the Government. I would not. By 



CRITICISM OF THE COURTS 251 

resisting it as a political rule, I disturb no right of prop- 
erty, create no disorder, excite no mobs. 

We oppose the Dred Scott decision in a certain way. 
. We do not propose that when Dred Scott has been 
decided to be a slave by the court, we, as a mob, will 
decide him to be free. We do not propose ... in any 
violent way [to] disturb the rights of property thus settled. 
. . . We propose so resisting it as to have it reversed if we 
can, and a new judicial rule established upon this subject. 

I believe the decision was improperly made, and I go 
for reversing it. 

He also stated that the decision was due 
to "apparent partisan bias," that it was "an 
astonisher in legal history," "a new wonder 
of the world," and "based upon falsehood in 
the main as to the facts." 

I do not see how the case could be put 
more clearly or more strongly than it was 
thus put by Lincoln. As was right and 
proper, he used far stronger language in 
denouncing the Dred Scott decision than I 
did in speaking of the two decisions in ques- 
tion, for the Dred Scott decision was a very 
much worse decision than either of the two 
decisions in question, though these are also 
very bad. It should be clearly understood 
that all men who deny the right to take ex- 
ception in proper language to the decisions 

T 



252 CRITICISM OF THE COURTS 

of the Supreme Court on some fundamental 
question where they think the Supreme Court 
has gone wrong must condemn Lincoln far 
more unreservedly than they condemn me. 

The second point raised by my critics is 
that I have used too strong language. Now, 
the critics who make this objection forget 
that, as regards both these decisions, as in 
the Dred Scott decision, dissenting opinions 
were given. In the end, the dissenting 
opinions in the Dred Scott case became the 
law of the land, and no one now for a moment 
justifies the action of the majority of the 
Court in that case. I believe that such will 
be the case as regards the two decisions I 
have mentioned above, and I hold that it is 
the duty of every good citizen to do as Abra- 
ham Lincoln advised in the case of the Dred 
Scott decision; that is, to abide by the 
decision, but work for its reversal. My own 
language was by no means as strong as the 
language of the dissenting justices in the two 
cases. In the Knight case. Justice Harlan 
says of the decision of the Court: — 

This view of the scope of the act leaves the public, 
so far as National power is concerned, entirely at the 
mercy of combinations which arbitrarily control the prices 
of articles purchased to be transported from one State to 
another State. I cannot assent to that view. In my 



CRITICISM OF THE COURTS 253 

judgment, the General Government is not placed by the 
Constitution in such a condition of helplessness that it 
must fold its arms and remain inactive while capital com- 
bines, under the name of a corporation, to destroy com- 
petition, not in one State only, but throughout the entire 
country. . . . The doctrine of the autonomy of the 
States cannot properly be invoked to justify a denial of 
power in the National Government to meet such an emer- 
gency. . . . The common government of all the people 
is the only one that can adequately deal with a matter 
which directly and injuriously affects the entire commerce 
of the country, which concerns equally all the people of the 
Union, and which, it must be confessed, cannot be ade- 
quately controlled by any one State. Its authority should 
not be so weakened by construction that it cannot reach 
and eradicate evils that, beyond all question, tend to 
defeat an object which that Government is entitled, by 
the Constitution, to accomplish. 

The learned justice then continues to 
apply to the judgment of the Court a quota- 
tion running in part as follows: "* Powerful 
and ingenious minds may, by a course of 
well-digested but refined and metaphysical 
reasoning, founded on these premises, ex- 
plain away the Constitution of our country, 
and leave it a magnificent structure, indeed, 
to look at, but totally unfit for use. They 
may so entangle and perplex the understand- 
ing as to obscure principles which were before 
thought quite plain, and induce doubts where, 
if the mind were to pursue its own course, 
none would be perceived.'" 



254 CRITICISM OF THE COURTS 

In the Bakeshop case, Justices Harlan, 
White, and Day, dissenting, spoke as 
follows : — 

There are many reasons of a weighty, substantial 
character, based upon the experience of mankind, in 
support of the theory that, all things considered, more than 
ten hours' steady work each day, from week to week, in a 
bakery or confectionery establishment, may endanger the 
health and shorten the lives of the workmen, thereby 
diminishing their physical and mental capacity to serve 
the State, and to provide for those dependent upon them. 

If such reasons exist, that ought to be the end of this 
case, for the State is not amenable to the judiciary, in 
respect to its legislative enactments, unless such enact- 
ments are plainly, palpably, beyond all question, inconsist- 
ent with the Constitution of the United States. We are 
not to presume that the State of New York has acted in 
bad faith. Nor can we assume that its Legislature acted 
without due deliberation, or that it did not determine this 
question upon the fullest attainable information, and for 
the common good. We cannot say that the State has 
acted without reason, nor ought we to proceed upon the 
theory that its action is a mere sham. Our duty, I sub- 
mit, is to sustain the statute as not being in conflict with 
the Federal Constitution, for the reason — and such is 
an all-sufficient reason — it is rot shown to be plainly 
and palpably inconsistent with that instrument. Let the 
State alone in the management of its purely domestic 
affairs, so long as it^does not appear beyond all question 
that it has violated the Federal Constitution. This view 
necessarily results from the principle that the health and 
safety of the people of a State are primarily for the State 
to guard and protect. 



CRITICISM OF THE COURTS 255 

Justice Holmes spoke as follows : — 

I strongly believe that my agreement or disagreement 
has nothing to do with the right of a majority to embody 
their opinions in law. It is settled by various decisions of 
this Court that State Constitutions and State laws may 
regulate life in many ways which we as legislators might 
think as injudicious or if you like as tyrannical as this, 
and which equally with this interfere with the liberty to 
contract. Sunday laws and usury laws are ancient ex- 
amples. A more modern one is the prohibition of lot- 
teries. The liberty of the citizen to do as he likes so long as 
he does not interfere with the liberty of others to do the 
same, which has been a shibboleth for some well-known 
writers, is interfered with by school laws, by the Post- 
Office, by every State or municipal institution which takes 
his money for purposes thought desirable, whether he 
likes it or not. The Fourteenth Amendment does not enact 
Mr. Herbert Spencer's "Social Statics." ... I think 
that the word Hberty in the Fourteenth Amendment is 
perverted when it is held to prevent the natural outcome 
of a dominant opinion, unless it can be said that a rational 
and fair man necessarily would admit that the statute pro- 
posed would infringe fundamental principles as they have 
been understood by the traditions of our people and our 
law. It does not need research to show that no such 
sweeping condemnation can be passed upon the statute 
before us. A reasonable man might think it a proper 
measure on the score of health. Men whom I certainly 
could not pronounce unreasonable would uphold it as a 
first installment of a general regulation of the hours of 
work. 

A glance at these dissenting opinions will 
satisfy any one that I have not used language 



256 CRITICISM OF THE COURTS 

as strong as that used by the learned justices 
who dissented from the two decisions. 

Third. Now as to the question whether 
it is ever proper to criticize a court. My 
views on this point have been set forth at 
length in the Message I sent to Congress 
when I was President, on December 3, 1906, 
which runs in part as follows : — 

All honor cannot be paid to the wise and fearless judge 
if we permit the growth of an absurd convention which 
would forbid any criticism of the judge of another type, 
who shows himself timid in the presence of arrogant dis- 
order, or who on insufficient grounds grants an injunction 
that does grave injustice, or who in his capacity as a con- 
struer, and therefore in part a maker, of the law, in 
flagrant fashion thwarts the cause of decent government. 
The judge has a power over which no review can be exer- 
cised; he himself sits in review upon the acts of both the 
executive and legislative branches of the Government; 
save in the most extraordinary cases he is amenable only 
at the bar of public opinion ; and it is unwise to maintain 
that public opinion in reference to a man with such power 
shall neither be expressed nor led. 

The best judges have ever been foremost to disclaim 
any immunity from criticism. This has been true since 
the days of the great English Lord Chancellor Parker, 
who said: "Let all people be at liberty to know what 
I found my judgment upon ; that, so when I have given it 
in any cause, others may be at Hberty to judge of me." 
. . . There is one consideration which should be taken 
into account by the good people who carry a sound prop- 
osition to an excess in objecting to any criticism of a 



CRITICISM OF THE COURTS 257 

judge's decision. The instinct of the American people 
as a whole is sound in this matter. They will not sub- 
scribe to the doctrine that any public servant is to be above 
all criticism. If the best citizens, those most competent 
to express their judgment in such matters, and above all 
those belonging to the great and honorable profession of 
the bar, so profoundly influential in American life, take 
the position that there shall be no criticism of a judge 
under any circumstances, their view will not be accepted 
by the American people as a whole. In such event the 
people will turn to, and tend to accept as justifiable, the 
intemperate and improper criticism uttered by unworthy 
agitators. Surely it is a misfortune to leave [to] such 
critics a function, right in itself, which they are certain to 
abuse. Just and temperate criticism, when necessary, is 
a safeguard against the acceptance by the people as a 
whole of that intemperate antagonism toward the judi- 
ciary which must be combated by every right-thinking 
man, and which, if it became vridespread among the people 
at large, would constitute a dire menace to the Republic. 

I cannot state my position now more 
clearly than I stated it then. I continue to 
uphold the doctrine enunciated fifty-three 
years ago by Abraham Lincoln as regards 
criticism of the action of the courts. I feel 
most strongly that the decisions to which I 
object, and which I hope will be reversed, 
are wrong, for the reasons set forth so ad- 
mirably and with such convincing clearness 
by Justices Harlan, White, Day, and Holmes. 
If I am not right in my position as to these 



258 CRITICISM OF THE COURTS 

decisions, then I err in company with these 
four justices of the Supreme Court. If I 
am not right in exercising the Hberty to 
question these decisions, and as a result to 
endeavor to form a popular opinion which 
shall directly or indirectly secure their rever- 
sal, then I err in common with Abraham 
Lincoln, 



HISTORICAL SUMMARY 



HISTORICAL SUMMARY 

An Editorial in The Outlook 
by lyman abbott 

29 October, 19 10 

The New Nationalism is simply a later 
stage in the development of a continually 
developing Nationalism. The relation be- 
tween the States and the National Gov- 
ernment was not settled once for all by the 
written Constitution, and could not be. The 
Constitution is not like the hoops of a bar- 
rel that hold the staves together. Hoops 
fitted for a barrel of thirteen staves 
would not serve for a barrel of forty-eight. 
It is like the bark of a tree that grows with 
the growth of the tree and expands with its 
expansion. Chief Justice Marshall, by his 
interpretation of the Constitution, did almost 
as much to make it what it is as did its origi- 
nal framers. 

Says Joseph H. Choate, in his interest- 
ing address on Alexander Hamilton i^ — 

For the five years that preceded the adoption of the 
Federal Constitution the whole country was drifting 
surely and swiftly toward anarchy. The thirteen States, 

1" Abraham Lincoba and Other Addresses," pp. 105, 106. 
261 



262 HISTORICAL SUMMARY 

freed from foreign dominion, claimed, and began to 
exercise, each an independent sovereignty, levying duties 
against each other and in many ways interfering with 
each other's trade. European nations, finding that 
Congress had no power to protect American trade, pro- 
ceeded to impose fatal restrictions upon it. They also 
refused to enter into treaties with the United States be- 
cause they could not tell whether they were dealing with 
thirteen nations or with one. This only was sure, that 
Congress could carry no treaty into effect. 

Mr. Choate adds : " * It is clear to me as 
A B C/ said Washington, who from his re- 
tirement at Mount Vernon watched the course 
of affairs with the utmost anxiety, 'that an 
extension of Federal powers would make us 
one of the most happy, wealthy, respectable, 
and powerful nations that ever inhabited the 
terrestrial globe. Without them we shall 
soon be everything that is directly the re- 
verse.* " In the formation of the Constitu- 
tion, despite the jealousy of some States and 
the fears of others, this extension of Federal 
powers was given to the Central Govern- 
ment, and by that gift the Nation was born. 
But it was never the intention of the founders 
that it should be always in its cradle; they 
intended that the Federal powers should 
grow with the growth of the Nation, that it 
might, as a Nation, become happy, wealthy, 
and respectable, because powerful. 



HISTORICAL SUMMARY 263 

The New Nationalism, initiated by Wash- 
ington in his call for an "extension of Federal 
powers," was assailed by Calhoun nearly 
half a century later. Calhoun's contention 
may be here condensed into a sentence: 
The powers of the Federal Congress are 
enumerated powers; if it attempts to exer- 
cise any power not in the Constitution enu- 
merated, it transcends its authority, and its 
act is null and void; and it is for the State 
which gave the authority to decide whether the 
authority has been exceeded. This was the 
doctrine of nullification. Not so, replied 
Chief Justice Marshall; it is for the Supreme 
Court of the United States to decide whether 
that authority has been exceeded. The 
States did not accept Mr. Calhoun's theory; 
they have, despite some strong opposition, 
accepted Chief Justice Marshall's theory. 
The creation of the Union of States consti- 
tuted the first stage in the development of a 
New Nationalism; the rejection of nullifi- 
cation constituted the second stage in the 
development of that New Nationalism. 

A quarter of a century later Jefferson Davis 
propounded the doctrine of secession. It 
was at once more logical and more radical 
than the doctrine of nullification. It was, 
in brief, this : The Union is a union of sov- 



264 HISTORICAL SUMMARY 

ereign States; it is the very essence of this 
union that it is voluntary; if a State finds 
itself dissatisfied in the Union, it may v^ith- 
draw; there is no power given to the Federal 
Government by the Constitution to forbid its 
withdrawal. Not so, repHed Abraham Lin- 
coln. This is an indestructible Union of 
indestructible States; the right of self-pres- 
ervation is inherent in the Nation as in the 
individual. The defeat of secession and the 
triumph of Unionism as the result of the Civil 
War constituted the third important stage in 
the development of the New Nationalism. 

Prior to the Civil War banking had been 
conducted by State banks and under State 
regulation. In 1862 Abraham Lincoln pro- 
posed a new extension of Federal powers: 
"the organization of banking associations 
under a general Act of Congress, well guarded 
in its provisions," to which associations "the 
Government might furnish circulating notes 
on the security of United States bonds depos- 
ited in the Treasury," which notes, "being 
uniform in appearance and security, and con- 
vertible always into coin, would at once pro- 
tect labor against the evils of a vicious cur- 
rency, and facilitate commerce by cheap and 
safe exchanges." The recommendation was 
adopted by Congress; and, despite the op- 



HISTORICAL SUMMARY 265 

position of special interests and the fore- 
bodings of the timid, was approved by the 
people. Our currency ceased to be a State, 
and became a National, currency. The 
creation by the Federal powers of this 
National currency constituted a fourth stage 
in the development of the New Nationalism. 
Thomas Jefferson in 1806 declared that 
Congress had no Constitutional power to 
appropriate money from the Federal treas- 
ury for internal improvements, and pro- 
posed a Constitutional amendment giving 
such power. President Polk in 1846 vetoed 
a bill making such appropriations. "The 
Constitution has not," he said, "in my judg- 
ment, conferred upon the Federal Govern- 
ment the power to construct works of internal 
improvements within the States, or to ap- 
propriate money from the treasury for that 
purpose." At the same time Abraham Lin- 
coln made what was perhaps his most notable 
speech as a Representative in Congress in 
favor of this "extension of the Federal 
powers," and the Republican party in its 
first convention in 1856 took in its platform 
the same ground. This power of the Federal 
Government is now so universally recognized 
by the Nation that probably most of the 
readers of this article did not know that it 



?66 HISTORICAL SUMMARY 

had ever been denied; but in fact its adop- 
tion and exercise constituted another stage 
in the development of the New Nationahsm. 

Not until 1873, nearly a century after 
the formation of the Constitution, was any 
attempt made in Congress to use the Federal 
powers granted to it over interstate com- 
merce to regulate the National railways. 
As late as 1883 President Arthur in his Mes- 
sage to Congress regarded the powers of 
Congress over the railways as a question 
requiring careful consideration. Not until 
1887 was an Interstate Commerce Com- 
mission constituted, and then with very 
scanty powers. Not until 19 10 was power 
given to it to exercise a really efficient regula- 
tion. The extension of Federal powers over 
the highways of the Nation constitutes an- 
other stage in the New Nationalism. 

The latest development of the New Na- 
tionalism is Conservation. Conservation is 
simply the doctrine that the Federal govern- 
ment shall continue to retain the ownership of, 
and therefore the power to control, the forest 
lands, mineral lands, and swamp lands, and 
the water power sites which now belong to it. 

If the opponents of the New National- 
ism in the successive stages of its devel- 
opment could have had their way, the Con- 



HISTORICAL SUMMARY 267 

stitution would never have been accepted 
by the colonies, and the Federal Union would 
not have been formed. 

If formed, each State would have been 
at liberty to decide whether laws enacted 
by the Federal Congress were constitu- 
tional, and to refuse obedience if it disap- 
proved their constitutionality. 

If its disapproval had been overruled, 
and any attempt had been made to enforce 
the law, it could have withdrawn from the 
Union and set up as an independent sov- 
ereignty on its own account. 

Our currency would have been local and 
provincial, and in traveling through the 
United States the traveler would have had to 
purchase gold or a letter of credit, as in going 
to Europe. 

Our rivers would have remained undredged 
and our harbors unimproved, except as in- 
dividual States might attempt some improve- 
ments within their own boundaries, and our 
coast would have resembled that of San 
Domingo. 

Our railways would have oscillated be- 
tween a policy of cutthroat competition 
ruinous to the stockholders and of monopo- 
listic combination ruinous to the shippers, 
and by the habit of giving special rates to 



268 HISTORICAL SUMMARY 

favored shippers and favored localities would 
have built up monopolies from which the 
people would have been powerless to eman- 
cipate themselves. 

All the arguments against the extension 
of Federal power which we hear in political 
addresses and read in political journals, and 
all the fears of Federal centralization which 
are used to excite popular apprehension of 
the latest phase of the growing and therefore 
ever new Nationalism, are repetitions of the 
arguments employed and the fears expressed 
in every previous stage of national develop- 
ment from the days of George Washington 
to the present day. And the answer to them 
can be given almost in George Washington's 
words : It is clear to us as A B C that the 
successive extensions of Federal powers have 
made us one of the most happy, wealthy, 
respectable, and powerful nations that ever 
inhabited the terrestrial globe; and without 
them we should have been everything that 
is directly the reverse. 



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